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page 22. 



STATUE OF CUAUHTEMOC, 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 



BY 



Ef H. BLICHFELDT 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



-BJ 



Copyright, 1912, 
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY. 



Published September, 1912. 



^CI.A320812 



PREFACE 

MOST of what appears in the following 
pages was first written for the Chau- 
tauquan magazine, though all has 
been carefully revised for its present use. If 
the fruits of laborious original research ap- 
pear anywhere, it is the research of some one 
besides the author. His debt in this way is 
informally suggested by the text, except when 
it relates to things now become common prop- 
erty, and calling for no special acknowledg- 
ment. The opinions and sentiments expressed 
regarding our Mexican neighbors, on the con- 
trary, may be taken as at first hand. Here 
also the writer would be presumptuous to set 
up any claims as a discoverer or to deny that 
he owes much to teachers and prompters. 
These opinions and sentiments, however, are 
such as without falsity he may call his own, 
and grow out of alert, sympathetic contact 
and correspondence with Mexicans for several 
years. If the reader can be made ^o adopt 

iii 



PREFACE 

them by the somewhat impressionistic account 
here given, the only dehberate purpose of the 
book will have been served. For the most 
part even this has been quite subordinate to 
the impulse that Henry Ward Beecher de- 
clared when he said, "There are some things 
that cannot be seen satisfactorily with less 
than four eyes." The delights of travel in 
Mexico are such as one would like to share^ 



IV 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Mexico 1 

II. The Mexicans 10 

III. Going 23 

IV. Henequin 41 

V. Vera Cruz 57 

VI. Tehuantepec and the Jungle ... 67 

VII. Oaxaca 92 

VIII. To MiTLA AND Back 100 

IX. Mexico City 109 

X. Sight-seeing at the Capital . . . .119 

XL The Government 145 

XII. XOCHIMILCO 164 

XIII. CUERNAVACA, CuAUTLA, PuEBLA . . . 173 

XIV. A ToLTEC Pyramid 182 

XV. Higher than the Alps 190 

XVI. Towns and More Towns 202 

V 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVII. A Ride to Regla 210 

XVIII. The West and North 220 

XIX. Tides that Meet 235 

XX. Customs and Comparisons 248 

XXI. Last Words 257 

Bibliography 271 

Index * 273 



VI 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Statue of Cuauhtemoc Frontispiece \y 

OPPOSITE PAGE 

Map of Mexico 1 >^ 

Benito Juarez 12 ^' 

" The Torture of Cuauhtemoc," National Museum 22 •/ 

Detail from Cuauhtemoc Monument 22 v' 

Tarahumare Carriers 44 

Amateca Girl 44 

A Mexican Kitchen 44 i- 

Vera Cruz, looking out to the Harbor 58 '^ 

Types of Native Women 78 

Cathedral at Oaxaca . 92 "^ 

Interior of Church at Santo Durango 96 

Street in Mitla — Hotel at left 100 ^' 

On the Road to Mitla 104 v 

Zapotec Children in Ruins of Mitla 104 ' 

Hall of Monolithic Columns, Mitla 108 ^ 

Ruins of Mitla 108 i.^ 

Turkeys going to Market 114 u 

Market, Mexico City 114 ( . 

Stone Calendar of the Aztecs . ......... 134^ 

vii 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

OPPOSITE PAGE , 

Post Office, Mexico City 140 ^ 

Castle of Chapultepec 144 ' 

Porfirio Diaz 156 

The Viga 166 v^ 

Puebla 174^. 

V 
Cathedral at Puebla 180 

Toltec Pyramid at Cholula 186 

View of Pyramid from Farther Side . ..... 186' 

Popocatepetl 192 

Ixtaccihuatl 192 

Popocatepetl — Ascent 198 

Popocatepetl — Descent 198 

Guadalajara 204 ^^ 

The Road to Real del Monte 210 "^ 

A Maguey Plant 214 

Real del Monte — English Cemetery on Lower 

Hill at Left 218 ^^ 

Lake Chapala 222^/ 

Chihuahua 222 • 

Approach to a Mine, Guanajuato 228 ' 

Torreon 234 '•■' 

Monterey 234^ 

Indian Women 246 

The Zocalo, Oaxaca 252 

Francisco Madero 266 



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A Mexican Journey 



MEXICO 

IF you will join our company going to 
Mexico, I promise to show you things en- 
joyable to see — things that have been a 
source of unfailing pleasure to me myself. 
You will see them as I did on a visit a few 
months ago. Along the way I shall not 
wholly refrain from telling you of earlier hap- 
penings and experiences that come back to 
one on familiar ground after an absence; it 
would be hard to exclude these, and I feel 
sure of your good-humored consent. Do not 
expect learned instruction on any scholarly 
subject, though if that is what you want per- 
haps I can tell you where to find it. For the 
most part I know it will not be desired. Here 
and there an intelligent visitor is likely to ask 
questions; and at such points, without going 
to excess, I will tell you a little of what I 

1 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

understand the scholars and thinkers have con- 
cluded. It is not an analysis but a survey 
that we shall try to make, however, — not an 
investigation but a pleasant, wide-awake jour- 
ney together. If in its progress you grow 
as fond of Mexico and the Mexicans as I have 
long been, you will feel that acquaintance 
with them is abundantly worth whatever time 
and effort it may have cost. 

On any but the idlest excursion every one 
is fore-minded to a degree. Let us not ac- 
tually set out, therefore, till we have inquired 
briefly who the Mexicans are, what their an- 
tecedents, environment, and condition, and 
what prejudices and ideals we may look for 
among them. 

Mexico is not so large by half as it was 
before the war with the United States, known 
in American history as the Mexican War. To 
be more exact, we should say before the Texan 
War for Independence; but Mexicans think 
of Texas as having been wrested from them 
by the same strategy which ended in their loss 
of that greater neighboring area since carved 
up, roughly speaking, into a half-dozen other 
states and territories of the American Union. 
Till 1835 their domain was nearly equal to 

2 



MEXICO 

that of the United States, or to the whole 
of Europe leaving out Russia and Turkey. 
Even now, what remains to them would he 
enough to encompass Great Britain, Ireland, 
France, Germany, and the Austro-Hungarian 
Empire. That its natural resources will sus- 
tain such a comparison can here be neither 
asserted nor denied, but the scientist and the 
explorer go far beyond the mere tourist in 
appreciation of its riches. Where the tourist 
sees only desert, they see the waving green 
and yellow of potential harvests. If they dis- 
count at all the reckless enthusiasm of pro» 
moters beguiling the American investor, it is 
not regarding the latent wealth of the country, 
but regarding the ease with which settlers 
totally lacking in experience may grow rub- 
ber on impossible land bought at random, or 
market pineapples irrespective of means for 
transportation. There is no doubt that the 
country will feed and clothe some added mil- 
lions of people, and that it hides mineral 
wealth either to supply the necessaries of 
still other millions, or to barter for what- 
ever may be lacking. Suffice it to say that 
in its undeveloped resources we are consider- 
ing no insignificant country. Then let us 

3 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

pass from things that might or that doubtless 
may be to things that have been and are. 

The mantle of natural verdure and primi- 
tive human graces, of medieval romance sur- 
viving in a practical age, of hospitality, of 
leisure, and of pride which have been painted 
for us by the hands of such writers as Mr. 
F. Hopkinson Smith — this mantle is spread 
over a rugged and highly substantial frame- 
work, concerning which one refers, with an 
appropriate feeling of solidity, to Alexander 
von Humboldt. The geologic framework will 
be suggested to travelers in the United States 
by saying that it exhibits yet more strongly 
the qualities, as plainly it continues the sys- 
tem, not of the Appalachian, but of the west- 
ern highlands of the United States. It is 
rugged, Titanic, challenging, not rounded and 
softened as though it grew ready ages ago to 
invite the coming of civilized man. The stu- 
dious reader may consult Humboldt and later 
supplemental investigations, while others con- 
tent themselves for the moment with this 
general hint. Not gentle little hills like sheep 
in a meadow, but towering and bristling 
giants amid shatterings of a world stand in 
Mexico for mountain scenery. 

4 



MEXICO 

Even while giving this description I recall 
a very different one which may well be quoted 
here. Charles Macomb Flandrau, in his highly 
suggestive and entertaining, though often 
cynical and at times flippantly careless "Viva 
Mexico," says: 

*'The view from the piazza was characteristic of 
the mountainous, tropical parts of Mexico, and, like 
most of the views there, combined both the grandeur, 
the awfulness of space and height — of eternal, un- 
trodden snows piercing the thin blue — with the soft 
velvet beauty of tropical verdure, the unimaginable 
delicacy and variety of color that glows and palpi- 
tates in vast areas of tropical foliage seen at different 
distances through haze and sunlight. Mountains 
usually have an elemental, geologic sex of some sort, 
and the sex of slumbering, jungle-covered, tropical 
mountains is female. There is a symmetry, a chaste 
volcanic elegance about them that renders them the 
consorts and daughters of man-mountains like, say, 
the Alps, the Rockies, or the mountains of the Cau- 
casus." 

The description just quoted, however, is 
true only of what it represents, and it repre- 
sents the mountains with which, doubtless, the 
author is most intimately acquainted. The 
mountains with which I lived from day to 
day in Mexico for three years rise from plains 
already too high for tropical or even semi- 

5 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

tropical conditions, and hold their peaks from 
two to three and one-half miles perpendicu- 
larly above sea-level. They are, I believe, of 
the sort that one usually means in speaking 
of mountainous Mexico. The other picture, 
however, will have value to us, not only for 
intrinsic beauty, but also as showing how 
almost everything Mexican defies simple and 
summary treatment. The country is one of 
well-nigh unlimited variety, of sharp con- 
trasts, and of apparent contradictions. Snow 
and burning desert, oak and palm and steam- 
ing jungle growth, are all to be found in the 
1500 miles between Sonora and Yucatan. 
More impressively, indeed, they will all ap- 
pear in a cross-section, to be accomplished by 
one day's travel. One may drink chocolate 
and cinnamon on the warm Gulf shore in the 
morning, pass upward through the altitudes 
of cocoanut, orange, coffee and banana, sugar 
and cotton, during the next two or three 
hours, and by eleven o'clock, if a "norther" 
happens to be blowing, draw on a heavy coat 
for warmth, while looking upward across the 
dry table-land to slumbering volcanoes capped 
with snows that never melt. Mexico is a land 
of contrasts. 

6 



MEXICO 

A notion that the tarry-at-home traveler 
must dismiss before he can rightly conceive 
of Mexico, is that latitude determines temper- 
ature. Latitude is one of a number of con- 
ditions that have their influence on climate, 
but no one of them can ever be assumed to 
determine temperature until the others have 
been taken into account. The northern fringe 
of New York State along Lake Erie, which 
has become famous as a "grape belt," has as 
mild a climate as parts of eastern Kentucky, 
and there are points on the coast of Alaska 
where the winter is less severe than in either 
of the localities just compared. Of all the 
conditions that go to determine climate, alti- 
tude is the one that figures most surprisingly 
to the New Englander when Mexico is being 
studied. At least one Mexican guide-book 
has, and all such guide-books ought to have, 
tables of elevation for the important places on 
the map. All other elements being normal, 
an altitude of less than 3000 feet will give a 
hot climate in any part of the republic. An 
altitude between 3000 and 7000 feet will give 
a temperate climate, and an altitude from 
7000 up to 14,000 feet will give a cold climate. 
One does not speak at all of climate in the 

7 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

snow belt of Mexico, because snow and vegeta- 
tion do not alternate there, and life cannot in 
any natural way be supported. The snow line 
is about 14,000 feet above sea-level. The gen- 
eral level in that vast part of Mexico known 
as the Plateau has an elevation of 6000 to 
8000 feet. Suppose, however, that we mean 
by a hot climate an average temperature 
throughout the year of about 85 degrees, still 
it is true that the greatest extreme of heat 
will not exceed that in New York, and the 
discomfort caused by it will be less than in 
TsTew York. Similarly, if by a cold climate 
we mean a yearly average temperature of 60 
degrees, it will be found that the thermometer 
rarely goes so low as freezing, even in winter. 
A moment's reflection will now make it clear 
that variations up or down in a given locality 
are much less than they are farther north. 
This would be inferred from the latitude, as 
seasonal changes are generally less marked 
nearer the equator. 

If the differences between winter and sum- 
mer are less, the differences between night and 
day are more, and those between shady and 
sunny sides of a street far more, than in New 
York or Chicago. Even above 8000 feet the 

8 



MEXICO 

noonday sun is fierce, yet in the shade there 
is never a day above that altitude when the 
"shirt-waist man" from New York would sit 
long without his coat. At a given tempera- 
ture he would feel much colder than at home, 
probably because evaporation from the skin 
is more rapid, as well as because of the rarer 
atmosphere and consequent smaller intake of 
oxygen. If ordinarily blessed with good cir- 
culation, the northerner will be surprised that, 
even when the thermometer registers several 
degrees above freezing, he needs winter under- 
wear and a heavy overcoat. A phenomenon 
well known to mountain climbers and physi- 
cists, but new to many visitors, is that the de- 
creased air pressure allows water to boil at 
lower temperature, and an egg or any vege- 
table cooked in it must be kept longer over 
the fire. The atmospheric pressure at Mexico 
City, for example, is fourteen pounds to the 
square inch. This is a mere detail ; but it rep- 
resents a whole set of conditions for which the 
visiting lowlander is never quite prepared, 
however much he may have heard and read 
about them. 



II 

THE MEXICANS 

SOMEWHAT like the diversity of the 
land is the diversity of • its people. 
Among them are about six millions be- 
longing to the native races, over six millions 
of mixed blood, and three million whites. If 
we could assign to each of these three classes 
its relative place in the social and economic 
scale, you would no doubt welcome the con- 
venience. This is impossible. There is a so- 
cial and economic scale with well-marked 
gradations, but in applying its test, race can 
hardly be said to figure. It is true that among 
those occupying the highest station, pure In- 
dians are rare, and that among those occupy- 
ing the lowest station, the pure white does not 
exist, the occasional American tramp being 
outside our discussion. The fact remains, 
however, that there is no relation in industry, 
profession, business, politics, or formal so- 
ciety from which the pure Indian would be 

10 



THE MEXICANS 

debarred, or for aspiring to which he would 
not have ample warrant in law, sentiment, and 
historic example. Benito Juarez, the greatest 
Mexican who has ever lived and the greatest 
object of national veneration to-day, was a 
full-blooded Indian. Porfirio Diaz is one- 
fourth Indian according to his approved biog- 
raphers, but intelligent Mexicans generally 
believe him to be three-fourths, and they do 
not say this to disparage him. For a 
Mexican of European ancestry to disdain a 
Mexican of somewhat mixed blood, or for one 
of mixed blood to treat a cultured Indian as 
inferior, because in him the native blood per- 
haps of princes has never been mingled for 
better or worse with a foreign strain — either 
of these demonstrations of arrogance would, I 
suppose, be unique in recent times. There are 
families who take a harmless pride in declar- 
ing themselves Creoles of pure Spanish ex- 
traction. A writer already mentioned, how- 
ever, says that most unadulterated Spaniards 
in the republic are "either priests or grocers." 
Bull-fighters are another contingent. A gov- 
ernor of one of the Mexican states once said 
to me after speaking of his own lineage: 
"Very few of us here, if we are Mexicans of 

11 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

more than two or three generations, can tell 
what proportion of native Indian blood we 
may have." It might have been replied that, 
even so, they are not much farther from a 
complete racial analysis of themselves than 
some of the rest of mankind. 

It very soon ceases to be a surprise, then, 
to find in the learned professions and in im- 
portant positions of various kinds, people of 
the original Mexican stock. Perhaps the fact 
that all of these are not equally dark, that 
some Spaniards are far from light, and that 
the natives often have splendid heads and 
finely chiseled features has as much to do with 
the state of affairs as the undoubted capacity 
of many of the Indians. 

In the entire absence of a race problem, for 
which Mexicans ought to be grateful, eco- 
nomic differences are as sharp and distinctions 
are as clearly drawn as elsewhere. There is 
perhaps no country equally civilized where the 
educational, political, and material welfare of 
the laboring people has advanced less and 
where their condition presents more cruel, and 
at the same time more immemorially pictur- 
esque phases than in Mexico. The problem of 
lifting them to a distinctly higher plane of 

12 




BENITO JUAREZ. 



''». ■/■ .■ •> 



THE MEXICANS 

life is the immediate and urgent problem of 
the nation. It was the justification for the 
Madero revolution, whatever may have been 
the alleged grievances of other classes. It is 
the matter concerning which the Diaz regime 
must give its most important final account, 
however great the progress made in material 
development. We may assume that Presi- 
dent Diaz and his friends recognized this; it 
was one of their boasts, whether founded on 
exact truth and complete knowledge or not, 
that in Diaz's native state, Oaxaca, illiteracy 
had been reduced from sixty per cent, to eight 
per cent. Still, removing illiteracy in its tech- 
nical implication by extending the mere ability 
to read and write is not a complete cure. 
President Madero at once declared his realiza- 
tion that something larger and more funda- 
mental is demanded and that the problem is 
nation-wide. Henceforth, indeed, it cannot 
be ignored. But when at length its solution 
is reached, we feel that also one of the most 
engaging, one of the most beautiful to the 
imagination, of all the figures in the pageant 
of human life will have passed forever. The 
gentle, graceful, submissive, but well-nigh 
unconquerable and wholly inscrutable child 

13 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

of the ancient Aztecs, Chichimecs, and still 
earlier Toltecs, whoever they may have been, 
will have given place to some other, and 
doubtless a newly composite type. 

In writing the history of England, scholars 
can give us little more than conjecture until 
the advent of the Romans. Our British an- 
cestors neglected to make for us any intelli- 
gible record before that event.* Similarly, 
authentic knowledge of Mexico begins but 
little previous to the arrival thither of the 
gold-hunting, proselyting, and bloodthirsty 
Spaniards, who were the first bringers of the 
white man's civilization. Of the records that 
existed, very many were ruthlessly destroyed, 
and of the rest only a small part have been 
deciphered. The advance toward civilization 
on this continent, as in Europe, had had its 
ebbs and flows, had been broken rather than 
continuous. The Mexicans whom Cortez and 
his valiant murderers overcame knew little 
and said less of their remote predecessors. If 
the Spaniards wondered at this they may also 
have recalled similar lapses at home, seeing 
that for generations the invading Moors, so 
lately withdrawn from Spain, had been the 
only preservers of classic Greek and Latin 

14 



THE MEXICANS 

learning. The Spaniards, as conquerors of 
Mexico, were less kind to futurity; still cer- 
tain outlines have been pieced together from 
picture writings and from other evidence that 
survives. 

While there were tribes in various parts of 
the land that maintained independence, the 
greatness of Mexico as far back as history 
can trace it centers in the valley of Mexico 
round about the present capital, high on its 
table-land, yet encircled by mountains of 
much greater height. 

When we say this, we are leaving aside, as 
we must, the builders of noble and awe-inspir- 
ing structures in Yucatan and elsewhere be- 
cause they date back farther than any history. 
These builders were great in their forgotten 
day, but we do not know them and can give 
them no place. They may have been contem- 
poraries of Solomon or even of the Pharaoh 
who oppressed the Israelites in Egypt. 

Beginning, then, with what is fairly authen- 
tic, the Toltecs had sway in Mexico from 
about 650 a.d., four hundred years. They 
were the greatest builders of historic or semi- 
historic times. The Chichimecs, a ruder peo- 
ple, succeeded the Toltecs, not by conquest 

15 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

but because the Toltecs had died out. One 
legend says that pulque, the intoxicating 
drink of the natives to this day, was the cause. 
However that may be, the land of the Toltecs 
was deserted until the Chichimecs spread over 
it about 1175 a.d. The Acolhuas arrived a 
few years later, and still a little later came the 
Aztecs or Mexicans. 'No one can fix the exact 
dates, but with a few years' interval the three 
nations appear to have followed each other 
in this order: Chichimecs, Acolhuas, Aztecs. 
Although not wholly settled till later, all seem 
to have appeared before the year 1200. 

If the Chichimecs were less advanced in 
arts than had been the Toltecs, this was not 
equally true of the Acolhuas, who may have 
been descended from some kindred of the 
Toltecs, and with whom the Chichimecs min- 
gled and intermarried. So progress was hin- 
dered less than might have seemed likely. As 
for the Aztecs (or Mexicans), they were wan- 
derers for a long time and held themselves 
aloof. They are said to have come from 
the Californias. On the way they built the 
Casus Grandes, of which notable ruins re- 
main. Then after further wandering they 
reached the present site of Tula, fifty miles 

16 



THE MEXICANS 

north of Mexico City, where more ruins can 
easily be observed. The air is at once clear 
and marvelously soft; and as I remember 
there are two tireless buzzards wheeling far 
above the sunlit crest of the hill. One fancies 
that they must have done so always. The 
Aztecs remained here nine years. Finally 
they came to Chapultepec, "the hill of the 
grasshopper," about 1250 a.d. They went 
through one period of enslavement but were 
set free, so the story goes, because their mas- 
ters, a tribe called the Colhuas, were horrified 
by their religious sacrifices of human beings 
and the atrocious way in which they carried on 
war, even when nominally under Colhuan 
control. 

The Aztecs had never been far distant from 
Chapultepec since they first discovered it, and 
near it on an island they now settled them- 
selves. It was the year 1325. The priests 
who advised the tribe sa,id that they saw 
there an eagle sitting on a nopal or prickly 
pear and strangling a serpent in its talons. 
This they declared was a sign in agreement 
with prophecy, and the place of their abiding 
was so fixed. The Mexican coins of to-day, 
as well as the national flag, bear as insignia 

17 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

the eagle, the serpent, and the nopal cactus. 
Classic stories of the founding of other towns 
on sites oracularly pointed out may be inter- 
esting — the story of Rome for example. The 
Aztecs confirmed their tradition of religious 
cruelty by a ceremonial baptism of the new 
city in the blood of prisoners. Throughout 
their future they continued such evil practices. 
They showed, however, a genius for organiza- 
tion, for coping with natural difficulties — as 
in the construction of floating gardens before 
they could possess' themselves of enough nat- 
ural land — and for diplomacy. By intermar- 
riage of their princes with other royal families, 
they at last made themselves masters of the 
entire region round about. 

It was an Aztec dynasty, the dynasty of 
the Montezumas, that Cortez found in 1519, 
or almost 200 years after the establishment 
of their city. That horribly cruel religious 
rites and inhuman conduct in war were fa- 
miliar among them has been made clear; but 
it is also certain that better instincts were 
recognized among the people under their rule. 
Otherwise, how would the legend have been 
preserved that the independent existence of 
the Mexican tribe came from a repugnance of 

18 



THE MEXICANS 

their masters to their cruelty in religion and 
war? Quetzalcoatl, the gentle god of peace, 
was the titular deity of many Aztecs who 
were opposed to the sway of the more popular 
god of war, Huitzilopochitli. Similarly, it is 
clear that the government was aristocratic, but 
familiarity with another ideal appears from 
the account of how the nobles obtained their 
power over the people. In 1425 the king and 
his advisers wanted to make war upon some 
neighbors, while the common people opposed 
it, fearing that the enemy would be too strong. 
The curious compact was made that war 
should be entered upon with vigor, and that 
if it failed the people might exact of the nobles 
any forfeit, even their lives. If it succeeded, 
contrary to the dismal prophecy of the people, 
then they were to become slaves of the nobles. 
The war succeeded and the people were held 
to their unhappy promise. 

The form of government among neighbor- 
ing tribes varied. The Tlaxcalans, who aided 
Cortez against the Mexicans because of an 
old enmity, were democrats, their government 
being a sort of republic. The interesting con- 
sideration here is as to the state in which mat- 
ters were found by the conquerors from over 

19 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

the sea. Cruelty in practice by the rulers of 
the principal nation, though mercy was recog- 
nized as an ideal, and tyranny toward the 
poor, though the democratic principle had 
long been familiar, tell much of the condition. 
The Europeans brought no improvement in 
either of these two respects. Another element 
worthy of mention was the strong religious 
vein, availed of by the craft and power of the 
priests, as unscrupulous as were the Roman 
clergy a little later. In short, conditions were 
present to make easy either the improvement 
or the continued exploitation and degradation 
of the people. 

The Spaniards came. Few chapters in the 
story of man surpass the record of daring, 
energy, cruelty, greed, perfidy, and religious 
hypocrisy on the one hand, and of patriotism, 
heroic self-devotion, and unavailing courage 
on the other, which marked the conquest. The 
Mexicans showed themselves not inferior to 
the Spaniards in valor, in strength, in organ- 
ization, or even in military strategy; but they 
had no horses, knew nothing of gunpowder, 
and were otherwise less effectively equipped. 
Their chivalry was too high. On one occa- 
sion they sent food to the Spaniards because 

20 



THE MEXICANS 

they disdained to fight a starving foe. Their 
superstition made them, and particularly 
Montezuma himself, very susceptible to the 
deceit of the Spaniards. Even with all these 
disadvantages, however, it would have re- 
quired far greater forces than Cortez led to 
overcome them if, instead of having thousands 
of native allies, he had found all the tribes 
united against him. Like Greece in its fall, 
the native people lost their chance of per- 
petuity and continued development by not 
being able to stand united against the alien 
invader. Their downfall can scarcely be told 
with more dramatic effect in romances like 
Wallace's "The Fair God" than it is in a 
supposedly matter-of-fact history like Pres- 
cott's "The Conquest of Mexico." 

Though it is not strange that Mexicans 
even of Spanish blood should celebrate the 
independence of their nation, there is some- 
thing a little curious in the fact that, review- 
ing all this early history, they identify them- 
selves throughout in thought and sentiment 
with the Indians rather than with the con- 
quistadores. The finest statue between the 
heart of the capital and the castle of Chapul- 
tepec, on one of the finest avenues of the 

21 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

world, is a statue of Cuauhtemoc, the Aztec 
prince who refused to tell the Spaniards the 
whereabouts of his nation's treasure. A visit 
to the Academy of Fine Arts will fill the 
stranger with admiration of the same fact. 
Sculpture and painting, poetry and the elo- 
quence of public speech, have all been devoted 
to magnifying the dignity, the generosity, the 
courage of the native race. Betwfeen the 
purest Castilian and the most thoroughly 
Indian elements of the people, Mexican pa- 
triotism knows no division in this. The con- 
quered, not the conquering heroes, are the 
heroes and fathers of the nation. The ardent 
Mexican of any class resents being taken for 
a Spaniard. 




'THE TORTURE OF CUAUHTEMOC," NATIONAL MUSEUM. 




DETAIL FROM CUAUHTEMOC MONUMENT. (SEE FRONTISPIECE.) 



Ill 

GOING 

THERE are now several ways of ap- 
proach to Mexico; but the historic way 
is by Havana and Vera Cruz. It was 
from the governor of Cuba that Cortez re- 
ceived his commission to go in quest of gold 
and adventure in 1518; and while he was not 
the first Spaniard to visit the Mexican coast, 
nor Vera Cruz the first place that his vessels 
touched, yet the successful invasion of the 
country began with his landing there in the 
spring of 1519. It would take a long story 
to tell of all the invaders and adventurers that 
have made Vera Cruz their port since his 
time, despite the absence of any protected 
harbor. This lack made Cortez destroy his 
fleet, and was never remedied till about the 
beginning of the twentieth century. As for 
railroads, even a generation ago when the 
building of one from the United States was 
proposed, the rulers of Mexico were accus- 
tomed to forbid it, saying, "Between the 

23 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

strong and the weak the desert is a necessity." 
It was in 1884 that railroad connection was 
first established. The land route, therefore, 
is not taken by any one wishing to reconstruct 
the past; and even for a present sense of the 
individuality of our neighbor nation we should 
not choose to step over the imaginary border 
line from a town nominally American but 
still in a degree Mexican, to a town norminally 
Mexican but already a good deal American- 
ized. The broad track of the ocean, not the 
narrow glistening rail, shall take us to the 
land of our pilgrimage. 

Leaving New York on a sleety and cruel 
Thursday of December or January, we slip 
down the East River, remaining on deck, 
whatever the cold, and letting the impression 
of our own perpendicular metropolis fix itself 
as strongly as it will on our departing vision. 
So we have said "good-bye" to the exigent 
Land of Now and have determined the picture 
that will return to us for contrast when we 
look on older cities in the "land of manana" 
the land of the long yesterday and the un- 
tried to-morrow. If we sight again any shore 
of the former country it will be as those who 
pass by, and with a feeling of detachment. 

24 



GOING 

We find ourselves aboard a steamer which 
one member of the company, much traveled 
on trans-Atlantic Largitanias^ can scarcely 
regard without amusement at its littleness. 
There is, however, a well-seasoned old cap- 
tain, for this voyage a plain passenger like 
the rest of us, who says that our supercilious 
friend will change his estimate of the Morro 
Castle. The fastest vessel of the Ward Line, 
she is admirable also for the steadiness of her 
going in all weathers. As for size, not many 
years ago there was no craft afloat that could 
belittle a ship of 9,500 tons. 

This captain, born and grown in Ayr, Scot- 
land, and as fond and proud of Bobbie Burns* 
as becomes a good Ayrshireman, is just re- 
turning from a visit home after several years' 
work for "the Pearsons" at Vera Cruz and 
elsewhere. If we don't know who the Pear- 
sons are, he evidently thinks that we ought to 
know; and doubtless we shall learn before we 
have finished our tour. On arriving in Vera 
Cruz, if we like he will take us aboard one 
of their dredging schooners, of which he was 
once in command. Now he is to become chief 
pilot of the new port of Salina Cruz, over 
on the Pacific. 

25 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

The Scottish captain is not the only inter- 
esting passenger. On a ship bound for Liver- 
pool or Hamburg one might find the list 
made up of persons like oneself, bent on 
merely "doing" the objective country or coun- 
tries and then returning with the supposed 
gains of the expedition all jumbled or nicely 
assorted in their heads. But these people 
bound for Mexico are to be charged with no 
such levity. They set out with as many 
large and grave desires as were ever regis- 
tered at Wishing Gate. The young man with 
pink cheeks and curly locks has accepted in 
high hope of advancement a position as secre- 
tary to an American railway official; and his 
parents, who think that every Mexican car- 
ries two pistols and a wicked heart, bade him 
a tremulous farewell at the wharf. The dark, 
resolute-looking, "tailor-made" girl is a school 
teacher, now to become a missionary, whose 
parents, if she has any, probably sent her 
from them with Spartan or Puritan fortitude. 
That angular countryman of ours with the 
long nose is going to bring suit against the 
Mexican Federal government for having di- 
verted the natural water supply from a 
property in which he is interested. He can 

26 



GOING 

discourse to you roundly about the devious- 
ness and perversity of the courts down there 
and of their serviHty to the wishes of the 
Executive. He, however, will bring pressure 
to bear from without, if no satisfaction is 
given; and he has an English partner who 
will apply for redress also through the British 
representative. The very quiet man in the 
modest clothes may be a professional gambler, 
the engineer of a mine three days' saddle ride 
from any railroad, or a United States secret- 
service man appointed to find out something 
or other at personal risk. There is a former 
ship's doctor going to set up practice in a 
new "camp," and an old man making, for 
him, a really perilous journey to learn the 
truth about a mine in which his savings are 
invested. The mine has been paying since 
the days of Captain Drake, who may have 
enjoyed some indirect dividends, but the man- 
agement changes from time to time and will 
bear investigation. The brown, gesticulating 
group that you have noticed, who talk Spanish 
too fast to be understood by the Cortina 
method, are on their way home to Guatemala. 
The small but efficient-looking young Mexi- 
can and his quite dazzlingly beautiful bride 

27 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

have spent two weeks of their honeymoon in 
New York, where the senora, lately senorita, 
found her greatest delight in the Hippodrome. 
Do not on that account question her culture 
or her seriousness. Her playing on the ship's 
piano to-night was brilliant. She can discuss 
with meaning the literature of either her own 
language or ours. She and her husband are 
loyal but not implicit Catholics, with advanced 
political ideas ; and they assured us that while 
they did not favor revolution in 1911, never- 
theless. President Diaz being safely retired, 
they and scores of thousands would resist the 
succession of any but a progressive man. She 
is interested in social advancement and has 
herself been a teacher of the poor on her 
father's plantation. In a little aside she de- 
clared her conviction that Mexican girls be- 
come model wives in their faithfulness and 
their devotion to all the interests of their hus- 
bands, but generally the Mexican man is not 
so good a husband as the American of her 
acquaintance. If her own husband were not 
an exception, of course, as touching this sub- 
ject, she would hold her finger upon her lips 
forever. 

This business of reviewing our fellow-pas- 
28 



GOING 

sengers, some consultation of Terry's and 
Campbell's guide-books, a little study of 
Spanish, a good deal of parading the deck, 
and hours given to the sights of the sea, will 
fill the next week or more. We are due to 
arrive at Vera Cruz on Friday, but Captain 
Ayrshire says we probably shan't — Sunday 
morning is more likely; — and so we may as 
well sink into comfortable acquiescence. The 
study of Spanish, even, may be dispensed with 
altogether, for the ship's stewards are all 
Americans or Britons and we are advised one 
can make one's way anywhere in Mexico now 
by the aid of English alone, so general has its 
use become. This is demonstrated by many 
tourists every year. Yet by the aid of from 
fifty to two hundred Spanish words and a 
little knowledge of the grammar, one can 
travel with added pleasure and satisfaction. 
Often a clerk or waiter who is advertised to 
speak English will understand better even the 
most limited and halting Spanish. The Mexi- 
can people everywhere appreciate any evi- 
dence that a stranger has taken pains to learn 
a little of their idioma, which is probably of 
all languages the easiest, as it is certainly one 
of the most rewarding of casual study. 

29 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

The first event will be the sight, early Sun- 
day morning, of palms above an amber beach 
that some one says is Florida. We think we 
have heard the name in connection with the 
doings of one De Leon. As for our much- 
traveled friend, he has heard that there is 
wireless connection along the coast and goes 
to ask if the Aerogram for the day is issued 
yet. He is interested, not in the Fountain of 
Youth nor in a mythical El Dorado, but in 
the success of the orange crop. All day Sun- 
day this low land and the flotilla of keys that 
trail away to the southward will be visible, the 
canvas of many sailing vessels contrasting 
prettily with the green of the islands. When 
the sun goes down among them, imagination 
may flash forward at once to New Old Spain, 
in its larger conception; for on the morrow 
we shall find ourselves, not in Mexico to be 
sure, but in Cuba. 

At daybreak Monday morning on the first 
voyage that I took we were called and told 
that Morro Castle was in sight. The name 
filled us with a not unpleasant excitement 
then, for the incidents of the American war 
with Spain had not yet passed from tense 
actuality into the calm atmosphere of things 

30 



GOING 

historic. We were entering the tragical pres- 
ence of the battleship Maine, through a por- 
tentous gateway, on our way to a foreign, ro- 
mantic, and more or less enchanted city. It 
was a great moment. There, sure enough, 
was the castle at the left, there were the an- 
swering batteries on the other side, and there 
were we, breathlessly stealing in between the 
two terrors. This feeling gave way almost 
instantly to another, an appreciation of 
beauty that can no more be described than it 
can be forgotten. With its tower lamp held 
up like a yellow blossom against the flush of 
dawn, the castle, for all its bulk, has no frown- 
ing reality. Its lines and those of the ram- 
part farther in must have been hard enough 
once; but the mellow hue of decay, the half- 
concealment of venerable trees, and other 
quieting touches have at last subdued it all to 
a picture of loveliness. Beyond spreads the 
wide harbor, and along it the low-built town 
of many colors, all harmonious in the dim 
light, its sky line varied by many palm trees 
and here and there by church towers that could 
not belong in any Anglo-Saxon country. 

The flag of the United States was floating 
over the castle just then, and our ship cast 

31 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

anchor near the wreck of the Maine. I hired 
a russet-colored man with a heavy boat and 
a tattered red sail, bare feet, and a yellow 
cigarette to take me around the wreck. We 
went ashore and visited among other things 
the old Cathedral, where the sexton assured us 
of as much history as he could by declaring 
several times with a good deal of emphasis, 
"Columbus — ashes! Ashes — Columbils!" We 
understood this kind of Spanish very well, 
as far as it went, and our guide-books re- 
minded us how Columbus was first buried ac- 
cording to his own wish on the island of Santo 
Domingo; how, later, in 1795, when the 
French took the island, certain bones purport- 
ing to be his were brought from there to 
Havana, and how, in 1898, when in turn Cuba 
was lost to the Spaniards, they took the relics 
away with them to Seville. 

In this city of 400,000 inhabitants we began 
to appreciate a few of the facts, to see char- 
acteristic pictures, and to feel the proverbial 
spell of Latin America. The republics to 
southward of us have two of the five largest 
cities on the western continent, and may boast 
a half dozen cities all larger than Havana, 
which, however, surpasses Antwerp, Dublin, 

32 



GOING 

or Hong Kong. In any of them Anachro- 
nism, a figure that walks openly enough in 
every modern town, would be as plain to 
northern eyes as here, and show as pleasing 
guises. 

Cuba should have only passing mention on 
our way. We were aboard again before sun- 
down. The view of Havana from an out- 
bound ship at nightfall is most beautiful. 
There is no bewilderment of lights as in New 
York, but a thin line of sparks like a string 
of gems dangles along the shore for miles, a 
suffused glow reveals the outlines of things 
even more romantically than they appeared in 
the morning; and the personality that one 
ascribes to every harbor city appears at Ha- 
vana to be one of tenderness, as thus seen and 
left. 

Sea life is more abundant and varied in the 
Gulf than in the Atlantic. Flying fishes, like 
little creatures of silver, are passed frequently, 
and from time to time a school of porpoises, 
bent on making their way across the path 
of the ship, recall the antics of sheep bolting 
through a gateway. There is such a thing as 
heavy grace, and the porpoise at play em- 
bodies it. 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

Three days from our arrival at Havana, or 
two days and an added night of actual sailing, 
bring us to the west coast of Yucatan. This 
time there is no gateway with ancient castles 
for newel posts, no enclosed harbor with space 
for a thousand ships, no domes and towers to 
enhance the sky line, no murmurs of an in- 
dolent city's awakening. There is nothing but 
the word of the officers to tell you that you 
are riding opposite Progreso, the port of 
Merida, which is the capital of Yucatan and 
has more per capita wealth than any other city 
in Mexico. No place could be more devoid 
of shelter ; and while Progreso is an important 
discharging point, the estimates of cost for an 
artificial harbor have always in the past been 
such as to discourage the undertaking. A 
plan now under consideration is expected to 
cost over twenty millions of dollars. If you 
inquire, you will be told that there is no better 
place along the whole Yucatan coast. "We 
used to stop at Campeche," says the quarter- 
master, "and that's over a hundred miles far- 
ther south. It looked as bad and was in fact 
worse. When off Campeche you saw nothing 
but water and sky, with a little rim of sand 
between. Yucatan has no harbors." 

S4i 



GOING 

But we have not begun to make acquaint- 
ance with Progreso. The delay must be par- 
doned as it is unavoidable. 

The authorities forbid the landing of a per- 
son or a pound till the medical officer of the 
port has honored us with a visit and inspec- 
tion. In this they follow the American ex- 
ample. The Senor Doctor, however, has too 
much dignity, too much appreciation of com- 
fort, too much regard for sOcial amenities 
among his friends, to follow the abrupt, mat- 
ter-of-fact business ways of his American 
counterpart. If the breeze is too stiff or if 
the clouds seem to threaten, if there is a bull- 
fight or a wedding afoot, or if he is engaged 
in a friendly game of cards, clearly it would 
be inconvenient for him to come out. On one 
visit of mine the twelve-hour stop of the 
steamer was lengthened to forty-eight, and on 
another to sixty-five. We may as well gen- 
eralize, therefore, about the configuration 
along the peninsula, about the habits of cer- 
tain public functionaries, about human prog- 
ress toward the millennium or toward the 
vanishing point. For it is impossible, even 
on ship-board, to talk all the time about one's 
meals. 

85 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

When all else fails we can look overboard 
at the sharks. This has a fascination, un- 
canny enough in daytime, but of multiplied 
power and hatefulness at night, for often 
there are lamps by which the ghastly and 
noiseless forms can be discerned. Yes, they 
will come up in plain sight enough, and not 
by ones and twos but by the half-dozen. To 
be sure, they cannot, however they ti^y, pro- 
duce quite the applique effect seen in Wins- 
low Homer's painting of the "Gulf Stream." 
They must remain suspended in and some- 
what identified with the medium that they 
infest; and there is a certain unreality about 
one of them, however obvious he makes him- 
self. Is it not so with all creatures of prey — 
the tiger, the owl, or the pirate ship, if you 
ever observed any of them in their haunts? 
You are not so sure of them as of a cow, 
or a lumber barge. Still, the sharks at Pro- 
greso will do all that you have any right to 
expect in the interest of verification and 
definiteness. They are so tame, the officers 
of the Ward Line have been quoted as saying, 
that they "will eat from a person's hand — or 
leg." They will take a hook if you bait it 
with a chunk of fish or odorous meat as large 

36 



GOING 

as a ham, and you can try the muscular sense 
upon them. When you have brought one up 
to the surface, with the help of fellow-pas- 
sengers, and have lost your only hook, the 
mate will assure you that they are much easier 
to "drown" than a bass if you work them 
rightly, and that the only way to land one 
is with a runnin' bowlin' around his tail. 

Nights at Progreso are lonely to a stranger 
on deck. Perhaps there is no doctor whose 
business it is to come out and examine us. Per- 
haps there isn't any town, though there are a 
few lights over there to the eastward that look 
human and wistful. Everything ashore, for 
aught that we can tell, may be as when Fran- 
cisco Cordoba skirted this coast in 1517. 
Nothing is very certain. One passenger who 
had spent two days and nights thus with the 
sharks and the gulls, the water and the sky, 
the warm, unctuous air, the distant lights, and 
the solitude put his mood into rather senti- 
mental verse: 

What meaning have the terms of space — 
What is it to be near, or far? 
I have not altered, though apace 
Removed, nor felt that your loved face 
Would alter, or the inward grace 
That makes you what you are. 

37 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

And what reality has time? 

Is this not hard to understand — 

Half miserable, half sublime, — 

That now my thoughts with yours may chime 

And still for lagging Fortune's prime 

I wait, to grasp your hand? 

I do not know, but while to-night, 
In low, companionable tone. 
The waves console each other — ^bright 
The long familiar stars, and sight 
Peers home to every landward light, — 
I know I am alone! 

At times the port is far from lonesome, and 
humor is more natural than melancholy. I 
saw a half dozen American and European 
vessels there at one time, some having waited 
three days already for the perfunctory atten- 
tion of the port officers. It is diverting to 
imagine the inside appearance of a man's 
mind who can thus make large numbers of 
persons and great values in property wait for 
release upon his petty convenience and then 
can show himself complacent and polite as if 
nothing incongruous had happened. Cer- 
tainly he has not a Yankee sense of the ab- 
surd. "And so that is the Mexican way, is 
it!" you exclaim. Well, it is a familiar way 
among certain grades of officials. 

38 



GOING 

Once the embargo is removed, there will 
be doings about the ship almost interesting 
enough to make one stay aboard. Cattle will 
be lifted either by the horns or in slings out 
of the hold and dropped into the "lighters" 
that have come alongside. A great many 
American cattle of good breeds go to Yuca- 
tan, you are told. If you have been studying 
Spanish you will enjoy the admonition "Poco 
a pocoT ("Little by little") as pianos are 
deposited bottom-side up in another lighter. 
You may see currants from Italy, butter from 
Denmark, and corn from the United States, if 
it so happens. You will learn that Yucatan 
imports nearly everything and exports chiefly 
one thing, henequin, which is the fiber of a 
kind of century plant used to make binding 
twine for reapers, coarse inferior rope, and 
cheap brushes. You wonder that the rest of 
the world can afford to send to Yucatan the 
means of subsistence in exchange for such a 
commodity; and you are told that in fact a 
mere subsistence is a small part of what the 
rest of the world has accorded most owners 
of henequin plantations. As for the workers 
in it, they must be considered separately. 

One puzzling thing is the incredible activity 
39 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

of the barefoot workers in these native barges. 
You are told that they receive, too, an almost 
incredible stipend, for Mexico, a dollar and 
a half per day. They earn whatever they are 
paid. Only monkeys or squirrels are expected 
to be so nimble, only horses to be so strenu- 
ous and unstinting of energy. They do not 
illustrate your general idea of Mexican lassi- 
tude. You make note of them, but as yet 
they remain unclassified. 



40 



IV 

HENEQUIN 

BY the time the ship's tender is ready to 
leave, you have decided that after all 
you had better go ashore. You have 
already seen enough of the "lightering" pro- 
cess to give you a notion of the rest. 

Progreso, you discover, isn't anything but a 
good lighthouse and a port without a harbor, 
which stands second to Vera Cruz in the re- 
public for quantity of imports received. If 
the government builds the proposed jetties, 
their necessary length will be four or five 
miles. As for the town, it is credited with 
5000 inhabitants whose dwellings straggle a 
considerable distance along the beach. It has 
a park, a church that cost more money to 
build than a town of like size would afford at 
home, a bull-ring, a market that will offer a 
great variety of sensations to eye and ear 
without undue offense to the nostrils, and a 
railway station by which one may leave for 
Merida. 

41 



A MEXICivN JOURNEY 

It is a low, flat country, with little vegeta- 
tion except scrub trees and presently the 
henequin, which you easily distinguish because 
of its arrangement in straight rows. The 
plants, if allowed to grow haphazard, would 
arouse no suspicion of their being worth any- 
thing, gray-green, juiceless-looking, sword- 
shaped leaves radiating from a gnarled stalk, 
and growing out of a dry, dust-and-ashes- 
looking soil, if indeed they do not grow out 
of the limestone itself. Standing valiantly in 
their rows, however, they command instant 
respect, and knowing that they extract an- 
nually twenty million dollars' worth of value 
(American money) from the unfertile soil of 
the peninsula, you can easily view them as 
typifying man's subjugation of the world. 
The poorer the soil for any other crop, the 
more sturdily henequin is said to grow upon 
it, and the larger the quantity of growth, the 
better also the quality of fiber. 

At intervals you will see a little hamlet or 
the buildings of a plantation with its wind- 
mills. A clump of palms marks the location 
of a well. Water of excellent quality is said 
to abound in Yucatan, but it is all under- 
ground water, which must be drilled for and 

42 



HENEQUIN 

pumped. The soil for gardens and most field 
crops has also to be brought artificially, the 
rocks being first broken by blasting. So you 
no longer wonder at the variety of imports 
that you saw coming ashore from your own 
and other vessels, though you had supposed 
perhaps that corn would come more cheaply 
from some parts of Mexico. Surely in parts 
of the country, being the staple food of the 
poor, it must be cheaper than in Nebraska. 
So indeed it is in parts, and at times; but 
you are told that crops have been bad for 
two or three years and transportation and 
other facilities being as they are and the de- 
mand in each Mexican state so nearly equal- 
ing the production, American corn is to be 
had at less cost. This does not wholly dis- 
miss the subject from your mind. Butter 
from Kansas or from Denmark at a peso a 
pound does not stagger you, nor currants at 
any price, because, as Mark Twain declared 
about principles, one can do without them; 
but that the poor, who must have their corn, 
should be buying it from the United States 
disturbs our feeling that the low compensa- 
tion of labor is doubtless adjusted somehow 
to low costs in a bountiful land. 

43 



\ 
A MEXICA? JOURNEY 

From the car windows you catch glimpses 
of the poor natives and reflect that they have 
at least one economic advantage, that of need- 
ing few clothes. At the same time you will 
become aware of a merit in them — such gar- 
ments as they wear are astonishingly clean. 
This is not a condescending remark that on 
the whole, considering poverty and ignorance, 
they do very well; it goes farther than that. 
For in fact it is hard to conceive how people 
can trudge up and down the dusty roads bear- 
ing their burdens, in and out through the 
dusty fields at their toil, and keep their white 
clothing so spotless as these people do. It 
makes one lift up one's head in pride. If the 
evolution theory is a correct guess, to be a 
human being is after all a great thing and 
must signify a long upward process. The 
Mayas, who are the native race of Yucatan, 
did not learn from the Spaniards to weave 
their cloth, nor to cut and drape it in simple 
grace, nor to color in native dyes their threads 
with which to embroider it. As for keeping it 
clean, if you study that habit among them you 
will conclude that it also must have been a long 
time fixed. 

Another comforting observation is that, 
44 





rARAHUMARE CARRIERS. 



AMATECA GIRL. 




A MEXICAN KITCHEN. 



HENEQUIN 

whatever the wage scale, or the submergence 
below any such, whatever the cost of living, 
the seeming scantiness of fare, or the rate of 
mortality, these are not an emaciated people. 
Their well-rounded limbs, flat backs and full 
chests, well-poised heads and full contour of 
face do not tell of starvation. It must be that 
to some conditions for which writers have 
pitied them, they are adapted by immemorial 
breeding. You will find this same observa- 
tion holds in other parts of the republic (we 
call it so for convenience) ; and you had bet- 
ter draw all proper comfort from it, as some 
of the standard tests of well-being will show 
badly enough when you come to apply them. 

While the train speeds along its level and 
easy way, you speculate further about these 
golden-bronze men and women with their glis- 
tening white garments and their statuesque 
figures. Is it not an Oriental fact about them 
that they can be well fed upon almost nothing, 
and are they not Oriental in the calm continu- 
ance of their own ways of dress and their own 
style of habitation? For even the wretchedly 
poor do give some hints of what architecture 
they approve. Here are questions that the 
learned have, perhaps, not considered specifi- 

45 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

cally, though the larger general one as to 
origins has been often before them. 

Recurring to cleanliness, you ask whether 
all Mexican laborers are like these. Your more 
way-wise companion will counsel you not to 
press that query but only to mark these that 
you have seen in your note-book. 

Whoever these people are, you will remem- 
ber them with gratitude for having made 
spots so vivid in a barren landscape. 

We are traveling now under an arrange- 
ment with the Yucatan Tours Bureau, so cabs 
will await us on our arrival in Merida. It 
has a population above 40,000 and the reputa- 
tion of being the cleanest city of all Mexico. 
Its well-washed asphalt pavements, the order- 
liness of the business streets, and the look of 
freshness about the buildings in general jus- 
tify this title. 

You will be sure to notice the beauty of 
some of the gardens, and will be told not only 
that every tree and shrub had to be planted, 
but that the very soil in which they grow had 
to be transported and paid for by the cubic 
meter. The vegetable gardens of the city are 
grown by Chinese, who gather up every scrap 
of refuse capable of being used as fertilizer. 

46 



HENEQUIN 

In the way of sights you will be taken to 
a half-million-dollar theater, to a cathedral 
finished in 1598 at a cost of $150,000, 
to the house of Monte jo, built by a Span- 
ish worthy of that name in 1549, or only a 
little over half a century after the first voy- 
age of Columbus. You will be taken also to 
the Government Palace and will note that it 
is a substantial structure, but will not care for 
details. Very soon one learns in Mexico that 
the things to see are not "the sights." The 
picture of the city in general, with its 
many gesticulating windmills, the occasional 
glimpses of beautiful courts within the solid 
old dwellings, the unexpected presence of a 
few houses that would not be amiss in Balti- 
more, the panorama of strangely varied life — 
this is what feeds the imagination more than 
concrete and particular show objects. Cosmo- 
politan-looking Mexicans and cosmopolitan- 
looking strangers mingle with the most out- 
landish-looking foreigners and the most char- 
acteristically garbed of Mexicans — the women 
with their idealizing mantillas and the men 
with their abnormally big sombreros balanced 
above abnormally slim legs. Here, too, come 
the Mayas in their cotton with colored bor- 

47 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

ders, their quiet self-possession, and their Ori- 
ental reserve. Mexicans will tell you that 
Yucatan is very clannish and express a hope 
that this aloofness may be overcome a little by 
such compliments as the one paid them by the 
election of a Yucatecan, Senor Pino Suarez, 
to be Madero's Vice-President. Of course 
you politely hope so too, but it does not sur- 
prise you to hear that the people here are 
peculiar and separate. 

If you can you will visit the museum, and 
will regret that you have not a day for the 
statuary and other Maya curios here pre- 
served. You will be certain later, however, 
to visit the National Museum at the capital, 
where a mere tourist can do more in a given 
length of time. 

If you are to continue with the same ves- 
sel, you will see nothing of the world-famous 
ruins of Yucatan, those gigantic and ponder- 
ous as well as beautiful relics of a people 
whose forefathers, as some scholars believe, 
may have been the earliest of human kind. 
Again, if you must, you will console yourself 
in your purpose to see other ruins, not like 
these and not so old, it may be, but of such 
character and such antiquity as to fill us with 

48 



HENEQUIN 

the same awe of the greatness of the past in 
our western hemisphere. If, on the other 
hand, you can spare a week till the next 
steamer, as I never could, you may 
easily spend a day or two on a hene- 
quin plantation, and visit the most ac- 
cessible Yucatan ruins, those of Uxmal. The 
ruins cover square miles of area and consti- 
tute only one of many groups in Yucatan. 
They do not need to be reconstructed by the 
imagination and the patience of the archae- 
ologist; they stand clear and real for the eye 
and the camera of whoever seeks theai out, 
not only in the soliditj^ of their age-old walls 
but in the loveliness, astonishing variety, and 
unexplainable subject-matter of their decora- 
tions. Elephants, leopards, and other animals 
not associated in our minds with any 
American civilization are plainly repre- 
sented. How old are they? How old 
is Egypt? There are serious and pains- 
taking scholars who believe that the wondrous 
builders of these colossal and rich palaces, 
temples, and tombs were as early in their 
progress as the builders and sculptors of the 
Nile valley. They are old. But you do not 
wish to tarry with one who knows them only 

49 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

from having gone over books and printed 
views in delight and amazement. John L. 
Stephens has written about them, and there 
are later supplemental writings. 

So it is recent history to recall that Span- 
iards caught sight of the peninsula in 1506 or 
that they landed upon it in 1518, or that they 
made their first settlement in 1528. The voy- 
ages of Columbus himself were but' a little 
while ago. 

It will not take much travel to suggest, and 
any added travel will only confirm the impres- 
sion, that Yucatan is somehow related to 
Florida, though geologists doubt or deny it. 
The train ride from Progreso to Merida across 
the low land with its scrubby growth and its 
many pools and marshes would have called up 
remembrances of certain Florida scenery even 
if one had not just sailed along the keys that 
are like the dotted line between two heavy 
pen strokes. Yucatan is not to be thought of 
as coming under our first general description 
of Mexico at all, for it compares with the 
main land as Florida compares with the Rocky 
Mountain country. 

There is likely to be less haste in getting 
back to the steamer than there was to catch 

50 



HENEQUIN 

the morning train. In Progreso a visit can 
be made to one of the great sisal (henequin) 
warehouses and time can be taken to notice 
the quality and quantity of the material ranged 
in great 400-pound bales upon the wharves. 
Here, as on the plantations, little mules pro- 
pel the flat cars that convey it along narrow- 
gauge tramways ; and the bales mass up as do 
cotton-bales on the wharves at New Orleans, 
by the thousand. 

No one who has been reading about Mex- 
ico can leave Merida and Progreso without 
asking as to the status of the people who do 
the work on the plantations. On my last trip 
I devoted a large part of my time to just this 
inquiry. The revolution was not yet accom- 
plished and President Diaz was still in nom- 
inal control. 

Are Yaquis deported here from far-away 
Sonora? Yes, certainly, as a war measure. 

Are they ill treated? They are accorded 
the same treatment that the native Mayas re- 
ceive. There is no occasion to treat them with 
special severity since they are as industrious, 
peaceable, and dependable as any workers in 
the republic. After all, however, they are 
somewhat undesirable in one respect, that they 

51 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

die very rapidly when brought to this climate 
so diiferent from their own. 

What is implied by saying that they are 
treated like the Maya laborers? Are they 
slaves? 'No one uses the word slave in Mex- 
ico. The laws and the Constitution forbid 
slavery. The people are held without sanc- 
tion of law, but with the connivance of the 
government in a feudal bondage to the land. 
The owner of the land exercises a power 
whose limits are seldom discussed, and the 
people look to him for whatever protection, 
guidance, and means of subsistence they are 
to have. 

Can they leave at will? Not if they are in 
debt, as is usually the case. A shrewd em- 
ployer, even though a kindly one, will usually 
find opportunity to bring that about — trans- 
portation if they come to him from a distance, 
marriage fees, baptism fees, or what not, ren- 
der most of them willing borrowers. To Mexi- 
cans just a degree more intelligent, of course 
debt is a mortal terror. 

Can they be transferred at the will of the 
owner? He can transfer his debt-claim, yes. 
But he seldom wishes to, except when he sells 
the land, as labor is scarce. 

52 



HENEQUIN 

Are the slaves — that is the workers — ever 
beaten, or otherwise maltreated? Doubtless, 
sometimes, but sensational books exaggerate. 
A great many owners are kind to their work 
people. Some make great personal effort and 
sacrifice for their welfare, and feel it a serious 
responsibility. Food, housing, personal treat- 
ment, and exactions of labor vary, of course, 
with different owners. 

Still, if there should be here and there a 
cruel owner or overseer, the laborers are at 
his mercy, are they not? What redress have 
they? Well, there are shyster lawyers who 
will take the case of such laborers, but often 
the workers find the attempt difficult and 
dangerous. The fact is the authorities have 
favored a pretty tight hold on the only kind 
of labor that seems possible here; and that 
means a pretty strong exercise of control by 
the owners. 

If a man owes fifty dollars which I am will- 
ing to pay in order to secure his service, can 
he go away with me of his own choice? You 
would have to get his employer to go before 
a judge and sign a release, indicating that all 
the man's debt is discharged by your payment 
of fifty dollars. 

53 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

Then the fact is that by my help the man 
may with difficulty free himself, and without 
help he would certainly be unable, unless his 
employer saw fit to release him? That is one 
way of putting it, yes. 

And what excuse is there, in a country with 
a modern Constitution and with enlightened 
laws on its statute books, for maintaining such 
a system? The excuse of business necessity. 
These people would not do the needed work 
on a voluntary basis; and the labor problem 
could not be met at all. The system is not de- 
fensible by argument, it is not what it ought 
to be, but to change it seems impossible. We 
believe these natives are generally and for the 
most part better off with some one both to 
command them and to provide for them. Left 
to themselves they are both improvident and 
lazy. Many Mexican laborers cannot be hired 
to work voluntarily more than two or three 
days a week. 

The above, though a composite of several 
interviews with men in official authority, in 
business relations, or otherwise well qualified 
to know, represents the unanimous and, ex- 
cept in details, the unvarying replies that 
were given me on the points raised. I talked 

54 



HENEQUIN 

with no one of radical sympathies. It is only 
as to frequency or infrequency of gross abuse 
that difference of opinion exists. And with- 
out having spent a good deal of actual time 
among the plantations, one's opinion on this 
must be taken either from such testimony as 
one can gather, or from settled doctrines as to 
the tendency of arbitrary and irresponsible 
power and the natural effect on its unwilling 
objects. 

Every one is doctrinaire enough to infer 
something from general principles. Standing 
on the wharf ready for departure one looks 
at the clean, coarse fiber in its bales, thinks of 
its growth under the ardent but not unwhole- 
some rays of the sun, and would be willing to 
vote that no man should betray another sim- 
pler man into debt and servitude in order to 
obtain its cultivation. Free labor and a fair 
share of its return, together with the strict 
punishment of any one who should advance 
money on a labor contract, might be hard for 
existing enterprise to adjust itself to; but on 
broad humanitarian grounds one would be 
willing to see it honestly, bravely, and persist- 
ently tried. Even should production fall off, 
there are worse things conceivable. One goes 

55 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

away inclined to give the exploited poor the 
benefit of the doubt. "That is," retort the 
defenders, "you would be willing to try ex- 
periments at some one else's expense." There 
are indeed many things that one might hesi- 
tate to try at one's own expense, yet which 
the most rudimentary justice demands. Dis- 
interested public opinion is needed to ,arbi- 
trate. 



56 



VERA CRUZ 

ABOARD again and ashore again! This 
time, after two nights and a day, it is 
Vera Cruz. It might have been Tam- 
pico, another important and somewhat expen- 
sive man-made harbor 250 miles farther north, 
if we had cared to change lines at Progreso. 
We should have fared worse for the rest of 
our sea voyage, however; and unless in the 
way of hunting or tarpon fishing should have 
had little reward for it. Eight days, less a 
few hours, is the time from leaving New York 
till you anchor at Vera Cruz, if the port in- 
spection at Progreso is made promptly. It is 
said that this sometimes happens. 

Vera Cruz has a delightful little park with 
so many jfine trees and shrubs that its conven- 
tionality does not appear. It has a good mili- 
tary band to play martial and other airs in the 
evening, and a hotel of an aspect as old as 
Ferdinand and Isabella, from under the por- 

57 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

tal of which the band can be heard to advan- 
tage. There are two or three hundred girls 
who walk round the outer square of the plaza 
making themselves part of the little poem to 
which the trees and the music also belong. A 
visitor who could afford to dash illusions to 
the ground would call only a very few of the 
girls beautiful; and there are at least two or 
three for whom an attempt at modernity has 
resulted in the absurd. Most, however, are 
picturesque, and have a quaintness that makes 
them pleasant to look at in the well-filtered 
though abundant light. They come to enjoy 
the music and the activity, to distract the 
minds of an equal number of less interesting 
young men, and, perhaps, to play with some 
mild distraction in their own pretty heads. 
Some have older women as visible accessories, 
for others, mother love is watchful from the 
benches among the trees, and for still others, 
as Vera Cruz is a coast town and has learned 
foreign ways, perhaps no one is vigilant. The 
girls revolve like a circlet of paper flowers in 
one direction, and the young men in a circle 
without take the opposite direction, bjr which 
device mutual admiration may exchange 
glances twice on each round. Still a third 

58 



VERA CRUZ 

circle is made up of the lower-class people, 
men and women, who also love the music, the 
light and flickering shadows, and the barter- 
ing of glances — if this were worthy of notice 
in their case. For one thing I have watched 
them and have not seen it. There is no look 
of envy or resentment toward those whom 
Fortune has placed nearer the center of the 
wheel of happiness. They belong to a docile, 
placidly reflective race who take most things 
for granted. Of the three revolving rings the 
outmost is not the least satisfactory to the im- 
agination. As for the young men, they will 
show better in daytime, when one does not so 
greatly miss the tight-fitting leather or velvet 
that they ought to be wearing instead of the 
foreign clothes which they have not yet learned 
to wear, and when they and we have other 
thoughts than now. One smiles at the young 
men here in the evening. 

There are Americans who eat and drink 
too much under the portales. There are money 
changers who demand five per cent., to en- 
hance the better currency than their own 
which you have to offer. There are, to be 
sought in due time, great high-posted beds 
canopied with mosquito netting, now less 

59 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

needed than a few years ago, but still not 
amiss as a precaution; the beds are two in 
each room, and a room is as large as a town 
hall. If you get a front room, which is best, 
you will have air to breathe, will see new 
charms of the park, but will be kept awake by 
street noises, including those of electric cars. 
A flat wheel in Vera Cruz sounds very much 
as it would in Hoboken. So also does a 
phonograph whose voice is changing. 

All these things are easily seen and experi- 
enced. 

You may incline to hurry away because of 
the reputation of the port for mosquitoes and 
fever. If your fortune is like mine recently, 
however, you will see nothing to suggest mos- 
quitoes but the netting over the bed. I re- 
member when they were in evidence. As for 
fever, in the winter months it is very rare, and 
no longer prevalent at any season. The few 
cases that occur are chiefly among those classes 
who cannot or will not meet the requirements 
of sanitation. Probably you will not take a 
sip of water in the city, except what is bought 
in bottles at a sufficient price ; and this is well 
enough; but still j^ou ought to be told that 
the city water obtained from the Jamapa 

60 



\t:ra CRUZ 

River is passed tlirough great filtration beds 
on which a good deal of money has been 
spent, that there is a two-million-dollar sew- 
age system, and that conditions generally are 
much better than they were a decade ago. Xo 
one used to stay in Vera Cruz longer than 
necessary, and any foreigner whose work held 
him there w-ould have liis family no nearer 
than Orizaba. 

It may happen, if your steamer makes port 
in the morning, that you "will have an enforced 
wait of a day in which to learn some of these 
things for yourself. Then, perhaps, you will 
make a trip to the old Castle of San Juan de 
Ulua. Begun in 1528, built at an infiated 
cost of forty million pesos in all, but, like 
more recent works at Vera Cruz, done well if 
bravely charged for in the bill, beaten upon 
by the imtempered storms of the open sea, 
captured more than once by buccaneers, made 
the last stronghold of Spain in the war for 
Mexican independence, later occupied, in 1838, 
by the French, and again, in 1847, by an Amer- 
ican fleet, witness in its dungeons of miseries 
untold, and even lately the frowning tomb of 
many civil or political offenders m whom hope 
was dead, San Juan de Ulua has a more 

61 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

varied and awesome history than any other 
fortress on the western continent. The Span- 
iards are gone forever, and it is known how 
they kept prisoners in mere manholes where 
the tide would rise to their necks. Other cruel- 
ties more revolting are known. The military 
rule under which Porfirio Diaz held the coun- 
try being so recently at an end, and his. suc- 
cessor having been less addicted to the press 
agent than he, we do not know fully what 
uses he made of this most dreaded prison. 
The dungeons and the manholes are still there ; 
but our guide-book, published under official 
sanction during his regime, naively says that 
the humane government does not use them. 
However that may have been, in November, 
1911, President Madero ordered that all pris- 
oners be removed from the castle to more sani- 
tary quarters. 

If you go out upon one of the jetties, at the 
end you will see boys fishing with long lines, 
heavy "sinkers," and large bait for fish dimin- 
utive, though of brilliant colors; or they may 
be flying kites out here where no trees or wires 
obstruct. You should admire the masonry, 
and read from your guide-book that harbor 
protection at Vera Cruz cost four hundred 

62 



VERA CRUZ 

years and thirty million pesos ($15,000,000). 

You will surely walk or ride out from the 
main plaza to the Alameda, another more in- 
formal park, and so out the Paseo de los 
Coeos. The winter temperature is delightful. 
From one of the benches on a Sunday or a 
holiday you may review a great deal of life. 

This Paseo de los Cocos has not one strik- 
ing feature, unless the stretch of avenue and 
park itself with the rows of graceful trees be 
meant. Yet, to the visitor with a leisure hour, 
there is something about the street as a whole 
that will make itself felt as unique. There are 
typical houses of every style that the varied 
character of the people would suggest, includ- 
ing the American, and of every quality from 
that of comparative affluence to that of the 
laborer. Whoever has traveled in the South 
of the United States and has gone up and 
down the streets of a negro quarter in any but 
a very large town with his imagination alert 
will know what is meant by saying that houses 
of the negro-cabin type, though not all occu- 
pied by negroes, predominate. The little dwell- 
ings are pretty in their way, most of them, 
and decently kept. The fine avenues of trees 
lends to them a setting that their owners 

63 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

could never have procured. The air of the 
whole place seems one of greater content- 
ment, of more relaxation and ease of life than 
that of the usual street in Mexico. The 
Mexican poor may suggest patience or abject 
submission to a miserable state; but they sel- 
dom show the happy abandon of the negro. 
As you go along here there is a feeling that 
normally the world is kind even to the poor. 
Arrived at the end of the avenue you stand 
by a statue of liberty whose design you will 
soon forget, and your eye sweeps on over a 
view of country that will not be so soon for- 
gotten. The statue marks for these people 
the end of what is accomplished or determi- 
nate; but the road goes on, and there are still 
palms that wave gracefully, and gentle hills 
that rim in the picture, and sky that is deep 
with haze — a soft enlargement every way that 
if it does not summon them to largeness of 
achievement must beguile them into largeness 
of comfort. They are not poets or wordy 
commentators ; but they do come out here and 
look — ^have we not seen them doing so, quietly, 
by families, the white, the black, the yellow, 
and the various blends of these? If jou walk 
back along the Paseo in the gathering twilight 

64 



VERA CRUZ 

you will fancy that the natural scene is re- 
flected in all that you pass. It may be only 
fancy, but it is likely to remain. 

There is an evening train for the highlands, 
but if you take it you will miss the evening 
view of the city, and, what is worse, will be 
able to see little on the way up. So you will 
doubtless choose to spend the night at Hotel 
Diligencias. From your balcony when you 
are awake you will become aware of a rather 
fine old church fronting the park, lovely in 
color, admirable in lines, and of impressive 
solidity. From your vantage point at a dis- 
tance you have seen it at its best. 

You will betake yourself in the half-light 
to the railway station, which is less than half 
lighted, and will vaguely hope that you are 
enough awake to have found the right way 
out of this perilous and purgatorial state to 
the paradise of your expectations. You will 
have learned that a modern union station, in 
keeping with the substantial customs houses, 
postoflice, lighthouse, and other public build- 
ings, is under construction; but this will not 
relieve you of groping through the old one. 
Make your way to the ticket window and ask 
for a time-table and the agent will tell you 

65 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

"No hayf which is pronounced as if allu- 
ding to the darkness, "No eye," and which 
means that the thing desired is non-existent. 
You will become familiar with it in Mexico 
partly because every second-hand American 
wag will emphasize its recurrence. As for 
time-tables, doubtless the passenger is expect- 
ed to carry the Guia Oficial, a monthly rail- 
road guide to be had at trifling cost. 

There is so much in anticipation that Vera 
Cruz may seem only a gateway and you bid 
it no lingering farewell. Yet this town, which 
was almost a century old when Shakespeare 
and Cervantes wrote, has a great deal of his- 
tory that may be read before and after the 
observations of a day; and even apart from 
reading you may find more direct impressions 
treasured in mind from your first day in 
Mexico than just now you are aware. 



m 



VI 

TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 

AS yet there can be no just quarrel with 
the goings or the tarryings of our 
journey, because they have involved 
little choice; but henceforth there is all the 
latitude that a great country of varying in- 
terests affords. The visitor for a few weeks 
must choose, then harden himself against all 
distracting allurements. 

Mexico City is in mind when Vera Cruz is 
left, not only because it is now the capital 
and metropolis but because in historic times 
it has always claimed this distinction and be- 
cause the route thither is the most famous in 
the republic. Economy of travel, however, 
will dictate that some other places be visited 
earlier. We turn southward toward the Isth- 
mus of Tehuantepec, over the Vera Cruz 
al Istmo Railway to a restaurant with an 
American manager and Chinese service which 
bears the devout Castilian name of Santa 

67 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

Lucrecia. There may be a colony of alliga- 
tors to swell the importance of the place, for 
alligators do abound in parts of the Coatza- 
coalcos River; but the freedom with which 
native women and children bathe below the 
iron bridge would argue that the alligators, 
if present, are little regarded. What makes 
Santa Lucrecia of any note is that there the 
railroad has its junction with the trans^isth- 
mian route called the Ferrocarril Nacional de 
Tehuantepec. We are on our way to the 
Pacific terminus of that line, which has been 
in operation since 1907, which is better known 
in Europe than in the United States, and 
which it is prophesied will be an enduring 
rival of the Panama Canal for all freight 
traffic between the two oceans. 

The traveler who left Vera Cruz in the 
morning reaches Santa Lucrecia about bed- 
time. The eating house, as one writer has 
nicely phrased it, suggests the old California 
mining camps with their "cheap bars and 
camp grub." "Here," he declares, "you put 
your zinc teaspoon into the sugar-bowl lest 
you offend by superior ways; drink without 
wincing if any one asks you to, and hold your 
tongue." In a literary way I would not criti- 

68 



TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 

cise this. As to its meaning, I have never 
tried wincing over a drink, or loosing my 
tongue in disparagement of one already 
taken; but I refused to drink at Santa Lu- 
crecia with no more hesitancy than I would 
in Saratoga; and the company, including a 
young American engineer, an English plan- 
tation manager, the German captain of a 
river boat running to Coatzacoalcos, and 
some mixed or nondescript personages did 
not take affront. We continued talking to- 
gether for hours till my train left, they ex- 
ercising their liberties and I undisputed in 
mine. 

The embarrassments and perils to a "total 
abstainer" in Mexico, by the way, are often 
exaggerated. I have heard Americans coun- 
seled to absent themselves from certain social 
gatherings on the ground that it would be 
a serious breach of amenity to refuse any- 
thing offered; but when they disregarded the 
advice they found their hosts as open to 
polite explanation as Americans would be in 
like circumstances. The Governor's family 
in the state where I lived gave continued and 
unmistakable demonstrations of cordiality to 
a visitor who had declined their cognac from 

69 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

the gracious hand of the Governor's wife 
herself. Why should they not? to be sure. 
As for the absence or unfitness of water, in 
restaurants mineral spring water is almost 
as omnipresent as beer; boiled milk is fur- 
nished; and then there are always coffee, tea, 
and chocolate, all of which have of course 
been boiled. Lime juice is recommended on 
good authority as a discourager of germs, so 
that a little may wisely be squeezed into water 
of which one is not sure. On jaunts, oranges 
and other fruits often take the place of drink; 
the palatable tuna or prickly pear grows on 
some of the driest deserts. The milk of a 
new cocoanut (coco de agua), if obtainable, 
will quench thirst for hours. All this is of- 
fered not as stimulating but perhaps as serv- 
iceable information. 

Santa Lucrecia is about midway between 
the two oceans, though not at the height of 
land, as the Pacific slope is much more abrupt 
and the highest point, therefore, about forty 
miles west of the middle. By west I mean 
toward the Pacific; and that is directly south. 
We have been for some little time and are 
still in a region of heavy rainfall, and the 
country is a typical jungle in consequence; 

70 



TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 

but it will end abruptly at the ridge. The 
difference between aridity on the Pacific slope 
and abundant rain on the Atlantic which is 
indicated for South America is almost equally 
marked even here where the ridge becomes 
low, and is narrowed to 125 miles. The west 
side has comparatively little forest, while the 
east has the greatest conceivable variety and 
luxuriance of growth. 

As evening had begun to lower before the 
change from semi-desert conditions took place, 
it will be impossible just now to get a full 
impression of the jungle. That requires 
either a long time or the traversing of con- 
siderable distance. The traveler is aware at 
the first approach of a coolness after the 
scorching heat of mid-day on the plains, of 
a gradual increase in vegetation until it is 
abundant, and of the insect choir, which, 
though different voices may enter, seems to 
produce at nightfall the same droning effect 
wherever and whenever heard. It is a sur- 
prise to find that one is to have a comfortable 
night, a thick blanket proving not unwel- 
come. 

Now the train is slipping downward over 
the isthmus, the highest point being Chivela, 

71 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

at an altitude of 750 feet, and vegetation 
begins to grow less. You may be prepared 
to view a quite different country from your 
car window in the morning. 

If you are up betimes you will catch sight 
of Tehuantepec, the name of which place is 
also the name of the Isthmus, and about 
which you can read and hear tales to stir 
your blood. The tales belong to the* whole 
region and some of them more specifically to 
other towns like Juchitan, a few miles away; 
but Tehuantepec is the name with which they 
have become associated. They are stories of 
a race prouder, braver, handsomer, and it 
may be more intelligent than others round 
about, refusing to intermarry with other 
tribes and having tastes and standards quite 
their own. Men and women were numeri- 
cally proportioned to each other somewhat 
as elsewhere, no doubt, till the men were 
killed off. Then the women, still disdaining 
to marry with men of a lower type, assumed 
the business and the leadership, and it be- 
came a community of women. 

A brother of Porfirio Diaz figures in the 
history of this change. Being governor of 
the state of Oaxaca, which includes the Te- 

72 



TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 

huantepec region, he did such wholesale vio- 
lence to property rights, to the virtue of 
native women, and to life itself, that he 
could no longer be tolerated. It is said that 
he was in the act of fleeing from the country 
when, early in the year 1877, he was cap- 
tured by the Indians, tortured as dreadfully 
as he had tortured many victims, and then 
killed. It is said that vengeance at the behest 
of President Diaz on account of this act was 
what prompted a massacre of nearly all male 
inhabitants of the place long afterward, 
though he is credited with having planned 
to kill only every tenth male and not all 
that the soldiers could reach, as actually 
happened. Porfirio Diaz has not been ac- 
customed to tell his motives or explain his 
actions, but a cold-blooded massacre did oc- 
cur, removing a large part of the men who 
had not been sacrificed in the long war with 
Spain and the later civil wars; and the gen- 
eral understanding of its motive is as just 
suggested. 

Ten years ago people said little about such 
matters; but in the spring of 1911, when 
they might with reason have been more cau- 
tious than ever, I found them eager every- 

73 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

where to say what they knew and believed. 
Books and periodicals in the United States, 
too, have not hesitated to disclose a great 
many things the mere hint of which, in 1910, 
would have caused some reviewer in the New 
York Post to denounce the authors as guilty 
of "ignorant abuse." To say that on the 
whole Mexico has been ruled in a way favor- 
able or unfavorable to ultimate high destiny 
is perhaps not given to fallible critics at this 
time. But that the existing rule has often 
been accompanied by deliberate, profuse, and 
relentless shedding of blood for over thirty 
years every one at all familiar with the facts 
knows. When drastic measures were taken 
against the lawless and violent, they had the 
apparent sanction of necessity. A charac- 
teristic policy of President Diaz was setting 
"a thief to catch a thief" — ^he mobilized com- 
panies of bandits and organized them into 
the "Rurales" whose duty it was to hunt 
other bandits and render country travel safe. 
Such a weapon in the hands of an arbitrary 
and irresponsible ruler, however, lent itself 
too easily, some have thought, to less justi- 
fiable use. That intimidation and repression, 
banishment, summary killing of individuals 

74 



TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 

guilty of no moral wrong, and now and then 
wholesale slaughter were admirably suited to 
the needs of the nation may be quite obvious 
to a few minds; but to the average intelli- 
gence it seems doubtful. 

And here is Tehuantepec shifting brightly 
across the vision in the morning light. A 
few women at the station who might be 
Queens of Sheba unless their garb seem too 
brilliant, a few who look like the witch of 
Endor, some market people carrying their 
wares, a highway bridge over the track, a 
strange - looking hotel with a high wall, a 
sparsely inhabited street, lined with cocoanut 
trees on the outskirts of the place, and some 
bathers in the Tehuantepec River are all that 
you see of this town of 10,000 inhabitants, as 
you pass westward. 

I spent a night at Tehuantepec on the 
way back from Salina Cruz, at a hotel whose 
proprietor, in the good English of an intelli- 
gent Jamaican negro, declared himself an 
"honest thief," and who justified the adjective 
in all his dealing with me. I would not ad- 
vise, and he would not advise, ladies of fas- 
tidious requirements to put up at his house, 
nor in his town. Yet if they could ignore 

75 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

whatever did not look good to them they 
might, I think, not fare badly in any respect. 
They should find their rooms only at the hour 
of retiring, and plan to leave them without 
scrutiny immediately when awakened. 

I walked about in the evening and early 
morning; talked for hours with an old pros- 
pector who has lived among the Indians in 
their villages; inquired afterward about the 
place and its people of officials, American and 
Mexican; read what the books say about it; 
and found that although a month would be 
needed for even such study as a casual, non- 
professional visitor would be prompted to 
undertake, the impressions and ideas that I 
was able to gather had the advantage of being 
reasonably clear and consistent. 

The Tehuanas live very much in their own 
way. No intimate, everyday influence came 
to bear on their conservatism till the rail- 
road was completed in 1907, if even that has 
brought any such influence to bear. Of 
course I speak of the native Indians, not offi- 
cials or other Mexicans from elsewhere, who 
are as alien as the American himself. They 
are not imitative of foreigners. Their adobe 
houses vary in size and costliness, many being 

76 



TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 

only of two rooms, some being quite exten- 
sive; and the furnishings differ accordingly. 
Their dress, even if they have means to buy 
costly materials, adheres to their own style, 
which is simple in cut but often elaborate in 
trimming, vivid in color, harmonious with 
their physiognomy and bearing, graceful in 
effect, and altogether of an Oriental sug- 
gestion. A young woman of such beauty, 
symmetry, and carriage that she might pose 
for Cleopatra is as little conscious of bare 
feet and ankles as though she lived in Cleo- 
patra's Egypt. If a triangle of meerschaum- 
color shows on either side above the waist- 
band of her red skirt, it is a thing of habit and 
she thinks nothing of it. Clothing, for the 
most part, is to her like the silk scarf that she 
carries over one wrist, as inseparable as the 
Japanese girl's fan, or like the necklace of 
gold coins that she wears — it is for adorn- 
ment. Concealment of person is no more 
essential to her than to Eve after the first 
accession of modesty ; but of the little require- 
ment in this respect she is never forgetful. 
Her modesty is as real and her sense of 
decorum as definite as that of the civilized 
and sophisticated American or European. 

77 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

Her neatness, cleanliness, and fitness of per- 
sonal ornament are such as to give one a 
pang when the inevitable result of outside in- 
fluence is thought of. 

Morality is a thing that strangers may 
easily misapprehend. The morals of these 
people are somewhat primitive, but not de- 
graded, if the two words are in any danger 
of being confused. Some will understand if 
it be said that there is a good deal of un- 
morality but very little downright immorality 
— very little wantonness. I have heard coarse 
men and men of careless speech declare ad- 
miration and respect for the women of Te- 
huantepec. 

Two Tehuana girls are employed as serv- 
ants by a cultured American woman in an- 
other town. They are honest, and she trusts 
a good deal to them. They are also confid- 
ing. They do all the rough, domestic work 
of her house. They are as quiet-mannered as 
any guest that she entertains. Their scant 
garments are as clean as she could wish her 
own to be. She says that they not only bathe, 
but wash their abundant black hair every day. 
They would no more put on shoes than she 
would put a ring in her nose; but they have 

78 



TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 

pretty sandals to wear when so inclined. 
Each wears at her daily work a necklace 
worth from a hundred to two hundred dol- 
lars and carries the inevitable scarf. Each 
has a more costly necklace for festal occa- 
sions. Their straight, tapering, and daintily 
kept fmgers show no signs of toil, their slen- 
der wrists are not thickened by the wringing 
of clothes; they seem immune to the effects 
that we usually think inseparable from labor. 
And how long will they keep their youth? 
Well, they mature early; but the Tehuana 
matron is also a creature of dignity, keeps her 
pride, and has a look of character. The aver- 
age of good looks in Tehuantepec is doubt- 
less greater than anywhere else in Mexico, 
and the average in Mexico, to any one of 
catholic taste, is distinctly greater than among 
the people that most foreign observers left at 
home. Colors and contours to delight an 
artist are everywhere; though the wretchedly 
poor, the aged, the lame, the halt, and the 
blind may show as hideous marks of social 
injustice here as elsewhere, and there are as 
many of them in Mexico as in any fruitful 
land under the sun. 

Of men who appear to be of the same 
79 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

stock as these women of Tehuantepec there 
are few enough to confirm the legend as to 
how they were decimated. There are few 
enough native men of any stock, though the 
old haughty exclusiveness is breaking down 
of late. Such men as one does see at all 
identified with the population are markedly 
inferior to the women. So the matriarchate 
which has been the rule for a generation 'will 
doubtless prevail for at least one generation 
more in this city of women. 

Have the men of the mountains, like the 
men of the valley settlements hereabouts, 
been exterminated? By no means in the same 
degree. My prospector friend told me of 
places where a camera and tripod, if mis- 
taken for a surveyor's instrument, may bring 
a fusillade on its luckless possessor, and 
where the authority of the central Mexican 
government is not recognized, but where the 
people are reasonably friendly if they can be 
assured as to one's designs. There is tung- 
sten in some of the high mountains, a good 
deal of coal, and unestimated stores of silver, 
iron, and other metals, the opening of which 
might have been hastened but for the some- 
what deterrent attitude of the mountaineers. 

80 



TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 

Yet these people, less known than the Yaquis 
of Sonora and regarded as equally warlike, 
may prove as little opposed to progress on 
equitable terms as many fair writers believe 
the Yaquis to have been. They do not trust 
the powers that be; and to obtain and deserve 
their confidence would be one of the duties 
of a progressive, enlightened government. 

The most conscious object of a trip south 
from Vera Cruz is usually to inspect the 
remarkable railroad and two splendid harbors 
which, at a cost of about $65,000,000, have 
established a freight route between the Paci- 
fic and the Atlantic shorter by four days and 
nearer by 1250 miles than that through the 
Panama Canal. This is a sufficient object in 
itself. But, after all, one ought seldom to 
travel with a single purpose. It would be 
like throwing away the by-products of the 
cotton industry. We are on our way to gaze 
at the artificial harbor, the dry dock which is 
the largest on the Pacific coast, the modern 
electric cranes for handling freight, the cars 
of special type for receiving their loads, the 
special oil-burning engines, the special swamp 
road construction, the devices for spraying 
hot chemicals to kill the almost irrepressible 

81 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

vegetation, and the other means, anachronistic 
in this land of supposed inaction, through 
which the uses of our heralded canal, save the 
passing of war vessels, have been anticipated 
by a decade. Yet we will not reproach our- 
selves for having paused over old, forgotten, 
far-off things. The decade or so will pass, 
the great canal will be finished, both routes 
may find use beyond their capacity and we 
shall see engineering feats to transcend them 
both; but we shall never, later, be able to 
muse a day in the Tehuantepec that now 
charms and baffles us. I had the privilege of 
visiting one of the harbors and rowing about 
the jetties in the company of an American 
army engineer whose name is familiar to 
most readers, and he was as much interested 
as professionally he should be. Yet he be- 
trayed more interest in a primitive Isthmian 
ox-cart than in any appliance that we saw — 
a cart entirely innocent of tire, bolt, nail, 
buckle, or other scrap of metal; hewn out of 
wood by rude implements; fastened together 
by wooden pins and by thongs; a perfect, un- 
perverted example of its type, within a 
stone's throw of so much foreign innovation. 
Salina Cruz is not a Mexican town and as 
82 




A TEHUANTEPEC BEAUTY, 
Wearing her elaborate costume, starched head-dress, and necklace of gold 

coins. 



TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 

a town deserves little attention. A courteous 
American consul and an admirable hotel con- 
ducted by a refined American woman from 
Kentucky or Texas or somewhere, figure in 
the traveler's note-book as next in importance 
to the harbor works. A day is sufficient, and 
next morning one starts up the slope again 
toward the other terminus of the road. Long 
before noon the height of land is reached. 
This time the jungle is experienced in day- 
light, and over such distance that its char- 
acter may be felt. Palm trees, banana plants, 
trees that might belong to some species fa- 
miliar at home for all that the eye could tell, 
undergrowth, tangles of vines, mosses, flags, 
and lily pads make altogether a variety and 
excess that is inconceivable. Many of the 
trees bear flowers of showy hues, many of the 
vines that climb up to the highest branches 
are masses of red and purple, orchids fasten 
themselves upon every crevice, and so the 
vividness and variety of color become almost 
as great a marvel as the rank prodigality of 
growth. If you could penetrate a little into 
the forest, it would be still more illuminated 
by the brilliancy of birds whose kinds are 
listed by hundreds in books. You catch occa- 

83 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

sional glimpses of movement; but unless it 
be a blackbird you could rarely make out the 
cause. It might be a parrot, an oriole, or a 
jay, all of which are so numerous that a 
census has never been taken, though being a 
little less impudent than the blackbirds they 
are more difficult to observe. As for the 
sounds, they are myriad and unending. In- 
sects, frogs, perhaps monkeys, and no doubt 
scores of creatures that you never heard be- 
fore mingle their cries in a babel that neither 
the guide-book nor your well-informed neigh- 
bor can help you to analyze. 

To calculating discernment all this is a 
challenge. Mahogany trees, five or six feet 
thick, dye woods and medicinal plants, lus- 
cious fruits and excellent oils are here in the 
jungle. Here is fertility to yield the food of 
millions, here are riches to reward the labor, 
the enterprise, and the prophetic vision of 
many a bold spirit. The instinctive feeling, 
however, is not unmixed with something 
like horror. One sees a riot of soft but 
malignant forms, of silent but powerful and 
malign forces. Our fine ecstasies about virgin 
Nature were mostly written in temperate or 
semi-arid places where Nature is self-dis- 

84 



TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 

ciplined. Here is no exclusive survival of 
the fittest but an indiscriminate and revolting 
survival of everything that mere fecundity 
can engender and fatten. Individuality, char- 
acter, symbolism, as we ascribe them to out- 
door objects at home, are foreign to this mass 
of vegetables. Here are no tongues in trees, 
nor books in the running brooks. The axe 
and the bush hook one thinks of without dis- 
may. It only seems that axe and bush hook 
could make little impression. "Railroaders" 
take dynamite to any ironwood trees in their 
path. A good conservationist at home, I 
caught myself drawing an eager breath on 
seeing" a little forest fire, then settling back 
in quick disappointment at the certainty that 
the fire could not spread much. Every clear- 
ing around a native hut becomes as welcome 
as an oasis in a desert, and when you finally 
emerge at Juile into broad fields where cattle 
graze in numbers, they are as beautiful as 
asphodel meadows to a returned traveler 
from the Shades. 

It will be night again when Coatzacoalcos, 
or Puerto Mexico by its new name, is 
reached. Another night in another hotel 
conducted by an American and owned by 

85 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

"the Pearsons," another dsiy in surveying a 
harbor and its equipment, less remarkable 
here than at Salina Cruz because the mouth 
of the Coatzacoalcos River offered some nat- 
ural advantage, another impression of a town 
that is neither Mexican nor American nor 
English nor a composite of its discoverable 
elements, and in which women seem ta be as 
scarce as in Tehuantepec they are super- 
numerary, and you have completed your Isth- 
mian observation, you think. 

One hundred and fifty miles farther down 
the Isthmus toward Yucatan and Central 
America, at Frontera, still another artificial 
harbor is projected, this time by dredging a 
canal from the Grijalva River near its mouth 
to a quiet bay a mile distant. But we shall 
not visit Frontera. 

Cortez foresaw that across this narrow sep- 
aration between the two oceans, where the 
mountain range breaks down low, would pass 
a great highway for the world's trade. He 
so wrote of it. Humboldt called it "the 
bridge of the world's commerce." As early 
as 1774 a Spanish engineer declared his be- 
lief in the feasibility of the canal idea. About 
the middle of the nineteenth century, those 

86 



TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 

opportunists, the '49 - ers, on their way to 
California gold fields, without waiting for 
canal or railroad, went across by scores, the 
Spaniards having long before built a coach 
road from one ocean to the other. An old 
stage driver who took many of the miners 
over was still living, I was told, in 1905. The 
American gold coins in the necklace of a 
Tehuana belle, if they do not date back to 
the '50's, may represent a preference that 
grew up then. An American engineer named 
Eads once had a concession from the Mexi- 
can government to construct a "ship rail- 
way," whatever that may have meant, but 
could not raise capital for it. It was a Brit- 
ish firm, S. Pearson and Son, builders of the 
harbors at Vera Cruz, Salina Cruz, Coatza- 
coalcos, and elsewhere, who finally constructed 
the railroad, the government at first paying a 
fixed sum for each unit of work but after- 
ward entering into a joint partnership with 
the Pearsons, which is to hold till 1953. Sir 
Weetman Pearson, president of the company, 
is now planning to build a railroad from Mex- 
ico City to Puebla, reaching snow line on 
Popocatepetl at 14,000 feet and with a branch 
to the peak about 4000 feet higher. It will 

87 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

enable one to go from Mexico City to the 
peak of "Popo" in two hours, leaving balmy 
air and a temperature generally of 75 to 80 
degrees and reaching one often as low as 20 
degrees below zero. Americans are not the 
only bold projectors. Americans, however, 
have not ceased to be prominent in the Te- 
huantepec region. There are abandoned, plan- 
tations and abandoned home sites well dis- 
tributed along both the Isthmian railroad 
proper and the Vera Cruz at Istmo route, 
which represent the utterly foolish investment 
of American money, generally brought about 
by ignorant and unscrupulous American pro- 
motion. I could learn, for example, of only 
one rubber plantation in which stock has been 
offered for sale that has a prospect of even 
moderate returns ; and my informants ascribed 
this exception more to luck than to com- 
petence of the prime movers, who were inex- 
perienced. Many plantations and private 
"home sites" not yet abandoned ought to be 
and will be. Every one at Santa Lucrecia 
treated the matter either as a huge joke or as 
a great pity. Missionaries in Mexico City 
afterward told me of helping families to pay 
their way back home, and urged that some 

88 



TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 

general warning be given. The objection to 
any general warning is that there are possibil- 
ities in the region for the right type of settler 
acting under the right advice. The American 
ConsLil-General, when appealed to, said in 
effect that he had often had these matters 
brought to his attention, but any consular 
officer is powerless to help, as the State De- 
partment does not authorize our representa- 
tives to oflper opinions regarding particular 
business undertakings. From a source of the 
highest competence I obtained this advice: 
"Refer people through their banks to Dun's 
and Bradstreet's, but let them say that they 
are interested only incidentally in the financial 
rating of the agents or promoters in the 
United States. What they need is a thorough 
special report on the conditions of the planta- 
tion or other enterprise itself." One of the 
most absurd things is the way in which inex- 
perienced persons make a tour under the con- 
duct of some agent, as a party were doing in 
our train, and flatter themselves that they 
have investigated. They take for rubber 
plants a kind of glassy-leaved tree that is as 
worthless as mullein stalks. They miscalcu- 
late the healthfulness of climate, the number 

89 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

of years necessary to raise a crop, the cost 
and availability of labor, the time involved in 
transporting perishable fruits — any one of a 
dozen factors that are vital. 

Making any of these blunders, a man is 
likely to profit little by the general fact that 
Mexico as a whole yields annually two hun- 
dred million dollars' worth of farm products 
and that scarcely a hundredth part of her 
arable land is yet under cultivation. Some 
day vast regions in northern Mexico will be 
irrigated and reclaimed as California, Colo- 
rado, Texas, and Nevada so largely have 
been; but during the process many a too in- 
cautious person may lose all he has. The 
right Americans to invest in Mexican enter- 
prises are either those who are prepared for 
wild speculative chances or those who know 
what they are about. 

Your Isthmian impressions are after all 
not quite finished, for as you climb the grad- 
ual slope in the evening train, lights will glim- 
mer with lowly human kindness from behind 
screens that in daytime your vision did not 
penetrate, and will mean something domestic, 
something that is comfortable to think about. 
After all, men do live here where only reptiles 

90 



TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 

might be thought to have a place, and some- 
how they shape life to its environment. The 
environment will yield also to them, and who 
knows of what they may be the forerunners? 
You can grapple with the thought of the 
jungle better now in the soothing dark, and 
to-morrow you will not regard it with your 
first abhorrence. You will again see it preg- 
nant with great values for time to come. 



91 



VII 

OAXACA 

STILL back over your course as far as 
Santa Lucrecia, then north, that is par- 
allel to the coast, which is to say west, 
two hundred miles to Cordova, and again you 
touch the route that you might have taken at 
once from Vera Cruz to Mexico City. But 
still you are not ready to follow it. You are 
bound for the city of Oaxaca, the capital of 
the state m which you have been for several 
days, and then to Mitla, the place of ruins. 
At one time you were within seventy-five 
miles if you could have struck across country; 
but the trail would have led through formid- 
able mountains, where the Indians are of un- 
certain temper toward strangers, and you 
could have saved nothing in time, nor in 
money after guide and mules were paid for. 
So you make this circuit of more than four 
hundred miles over three railroads, through 
two states besides the one that you have left 
and into which you will return. ^ 

92 



OAXACA 

A night in Tehuacan, whose bottled water 
has made you famihar with the name in ad- 
vance, will give you a taste of perfect climate 
and a view of Mexicans at a health resort. 
The hotel has decorations that would cost 
more in New York than the whole establish- 
ment is worth. You walk out into the coun- 
try about sundown and see women washing 
clothes but find no evidence that their own, or 
they themselves, were ever washed. The swift 
streams rush along with water enough to 
cleanse a multitude, through the clean, hard 
banks that they have lined with their calcium 
deposit; but people and houses look as if the 
water had brought none of its ministries to 
them. Is this merely one of the unaccountable 
variations of custom, or partly explained by 
the disheartening amount of dust that flies 
about, so that cleanness would be but a mo- 
mentary state at best? I remember speculat- 
ing about this at El Riego, a mile or so out; 
I remember as I returned seeing two soldiers, 
one reading to the other, under a palmetto 
tree; I remember the mountains at sunset; 
and I remember the heavy, fragrant white 
flower that dropped on the pavement under my 
window at night with a sound like that of a 

93 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

banana peel. So much I remember of Tehua- 
can. 

Oaxaca has 40,000 inhabitants, which is to 
say that it is as large as the old Massachusetts 
town of Salem. It is older by a hundred and 
forty years — older than St. Augustine by 
more than three-quarters of a century. It 
has been the scene of many battles, from when 
the Mixtec and Zapotec Indians made stand 
after stand against Cortez, the future Mar- 
quis of Oaxaca, to the times of Hidalgo, 
Juarez, and their successors. Such opposi- 
tion did the Spaniards encounter here on their 
first visit that they withdrew till a year later, 
in 1522, when Montezuma had fallen and his 
capital, Tenochtitlan, was in their hands. 
Then they subdued the place by the aid of 
great numbers of native allies. The inhab- 
itants of the region were largely an agricul- 
tural people, though the city itself had grown 
important because of the presence of gold in 
rich deposits. It was on account of the gold 
that Cortez chose this as the seat of his do- 
main and had himself created Marquis of 
Oaxaca by the Spanish crown. As for the 
gold, the conquistador es were not wholly dis- 
appointed, though their dreams were beyond 

94 



OAXACA 

realization. As to the people, while the city 
has always remained a stronghold of Roman- 
ism and often of political reaction, it has also 
been a center of political agitation whenever 
any new impulse was astir anywhere in the 
country. Even to-day there are Indians com- 
ing in to sell their wares at the Oaxaca mar- 
ket who have never acknowledged the author- 
ity of a foreign ruler. 

The cochineal industry originated here and 
spread hence to Central America, then to the 
Canary Islands and elsewhere. The Indians 
of Oaxaca had used the brilliant and perma- 
nent scarlet dye to color their sarapes, prob- 
ably for centuries, without discovering that 
they were indebted to a minute insect which 
feeds on certain species of cactus. They 
thought that they were baking or boiling a 
natural product of the plant itself. How- 
ever, they were perfectly familiar with its, 
virtues, as they were with those of many of 
the native dye woods. Here are still to be 
bought the best Indian blankets in the repub- 
lic, of either wool or cotton, dyed with vege- 
table colors, though one needs to guard 
against aniline and other delusions. The 
Oaxaca market, be it here said, is as charac- 

95 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

teristic as any in Mexico; and as becomes the 
market . in one of the best Roman Catholic 
towns of a Spanish country, it is at its live- 
hest on Sunday. 

Oaxaca nestles, as do many cities of the 
Mexican plateau, among mountains that give 
a noble frame and background to every pic- 
ture. There is no vista without a church 
dome; and churches and houses alike have an 
appearance not only of age but of permanence 
that is satisfying. The houses are all made of 
the heaviest construction to survive earth- 
quakes. I saw one of adobe that has been 
standing since 1660. Solidity is the keynote, 
in aqueducts, houses, churches, everywhere. 
The ancient-looking ox carts with their pon- 
derous wooden wheels, and the rough cobbled 
pavements over which they move so lazily all 
express it. The native men and women are 
types of it. One has difficulty to conceive that 
anything at Oaxaca ever changed. The cli- 
mate never does — it is almost perfectly equa- 
ble, and thoroughly delightful. 

There is an amazingly rich old church, 
Santo Domingo, once larger with its acces- 
sory buildings than St. Peter's at Rome, where 
young Porfirio Diaz dangled down upon a 

96 



OAXACA 

rope to the window of his former teacher's 
prison cell — one of many exploits in the career 
of this daring and resourceful man. He, like 
Juarez, was a native of the city. 

As striking as any architectural feature are 
the massive and extensive portales, which face 
the Zocalo and, with the cathedral, give satis- 
fying dignity to it. They harbor, within doors 
and without, the busiest mercantile activities 
of the city, and make part of a picture which 
could not seem much more remote than it does 
from any twentieth-century part of the world. 
Having left my hat in one of the shops to be 
cleaned after a dusty ride, I ventured bare- 
headed among the venders, public letter- 
writers, idlers, and passers-by, in search of a 
boot-black. When I found him, his first im- 
pudent, astonishing words were: "Where's 
your hat. Mister? You'd better look out or 
they'll arrest you and send you into the 
army." I told him they'd have to send me 
into the American army, and asked where he 
had learned my language so well. It de- 
veloped that he had beaten his way to New 
York a year or two before and had spent sev- 
eral months there in the "shine" business. He 
was about fifteen years old. 

97 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

The cathedral stands where the Zocalo and 
the Alameda, both rectangles, touch at a cor- 
ner, so that it has beautifully shaded park both 
in front and on one side and is itself the cen- 
tral figure of the whole scheme. It has at 
least one delightful aspect, that of the fa9ade 
from the plaza opposite. Particularly in the 
evening, this view is one of meltmg loveliness. 
The soft creamy or greenish hues of a native 
stone, the somewhat decayed surfaces, the 
angles softened by wear, are all more beauti- 
ful than they can have been when the builders 
left them, though the front must alwaj^s have 
been one of singular beauty. Within are two 
or three noted paintings by native artists ; but 
often I have not found Mexican churches 
favorable places for looking at pictures, and 
this cathedral with its warm tones and gentle 
outlines is a sweeter picture than any that it 
houses. 

On one of the high, surrounding hills, what 
appear from the hotel -svindows to be several 
natural mounds are in fact part of the ruins 
of JNIonte Alban, to be reached by three hours' 
horseback ride and worthj'^ of a visit by any 
one of antiquarian interests. They may be 
older than the ruins of Yucatan and are cer- 

98 



OAXACA 

tainly much older than those of Mitla, which 
nearly every visitor to the region sees. They 
are also more accessible. 

An excursion that is recommended, though 
I never went so far, is one eastward beyond 
Mitla to the summit of Zempoaltepec, about 
12,000 feet high. The panorama of moun- 
tains, forests, tropic lands, and opposite 
oceans — the Gulf of Mexico on the east and 
the Pacific on the west — is said not to be 
equaled from many points in the world. 
While lamenting that we cannot go out for 
the ascent, we may stretch our thoughts to it 
from having been so breathlessly near going. 
Another time, perhaps! 



99 



VIII 

TO MITLA AND BACK 

MI TLA, about twenty-five miles from 
Oaxaca, is the most famous place of 
ruins in all Mexico. Soon it will be 
reached by railroad; but I am glad that for 
me it was still necessary to take a coach. 
Three horses were driven abreast and a change 
was made at Tlacolula. There I saw the cere- 
mony of hand-kissing performed with as much 
gravity between friends on the street as 
though each withered and ragged crone were 
a duchess. It was always the older person 
that was thus reverenced by the younger. At 
Tlacolula, too, I entered an old church where 
the guide-book said nothing was of interest, 
and did, it is true, find the interior being done 
over in lurid vulgarity and furnished with 
images, the hideous crudity of which seems 
blasphemous to a heretic eye ; but I found also 
some old pictures, the canvas breaking 
through but the colors as rich as when the 
brush left them, and the whole effulgent still 

100 



TO MITLA AND BACK 

with the light that never was on sea or land. 
It is not worth while to ask the name of the 
artist, he was a native and a copyist — all art- 
ists are copyists — and there have been many 
like him in Mexico; but he belonged to the 
school of those who mix more than "brains" 
with their colors — who mix in tears and 
ecstasy, who, seeing the invisible, have the art 
to make some hint of it appear. 

At another little village, sooner reached 
than Tlacolula, in fact, is one of the largest 
and oldest trees on earth. A new lettuce is 
no fresher than the big cypress tree of Tule, 
with its girth of 160 feet, and its height, rela- 
tively small, of 160 to 175 feet. Cortez rested 
under it and so wondered at its vastness that 
he made record of it. Humboldt, as late as 
the middle of the nineteenth century, carved a 
legend to distinguish it, and it has grown 
calmly on till this decoration is nearly em- 
bedded. There are other great trees of the 
same species near; but none approaches this 
in size. 

Every lane in Tule is hedged in with the 
organ cactus which stands like elongated 
prickly cucumbers on end, giving a strange 
aspect to the irregular streets. The houses 

101 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

are thatched and surrounded by fruit trees 
and flowering plants. The inhabitants, long 
accustomed to watch the stranger go by, have 
never adopted his ways. A woman clothed 
only from her waist down disappeared on our 
approach, but not in confusion. Children did 
not disappear at all, but stood unashamed, 
asking for centavos. Men working over their 
sandals or their wooden plows hardly lifted a 
glance. From within the bamboo huts came 
the spatting sound with which Indian wives 
have always beaten their corn paste between 
their hands into thin cakes for cooking. While 
tortillas are now made in the larger towns by 
machinery, yet this immemorial patter an- 
nounces dinner time to-day in every Mexican 
village. 

The road from Oaxaca to Mitla is wide 
enough for four coaches to drive abreast. It 
might remind one of Charles Lamb's remark 
about a certain man's taste — so much of it 
and all so bad ! Along it go in procession the 
centuries from Homer's day to that of Sancho 
Panza, but never anything of later style, ex- 
cept the occasional tourist from foreign lands 
who recognizes in himself a thing forced, un- 
natural, grotesque. He passes like a comet 

102 



TO MITLA AND BACK 

through serene skies, save that he must pass in 
a borrowed vehicle; and serenity will return 
when he is gone. The crooked stick that 
served for a plow in Egypt and India will 
move along in its furrow, the oxen trudging 
before it; the carts will creak along the high- 
way; the donkeys with skin bottles puffing on 
either side will patter on; and the blue sky 
will arch over them all, unruffled. 

An hacienda with its old house covering an 
acre, the walls four feet thick, is the refuge 
and headquarters of tired and dusty aliens in 
Mitla. The world is all within the court you 
enter. Grated windows, doors three inches 
through, locks that some blacksmith made in 
1690 or thereabouts — everything in the place 
has been quieted by the caress of age. But 
travel out through the rather squalid village 
to the monuments you have come to see, and 
again you are reminded that age is relative. 
Not so old as Uxmal with its strange animal 
figures, not so old as Monte Alban with its 
picture writing, capable now of being repaired 
for centuries of their original use if any one 
knew and cared to perpetuate it, yet old 
enough to be stripped of history and free from 
ascriptions of origin, these ruins are a contra- 

103 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

diction and an astonishment. They are not 
moss-grown, for moss does not grow here. 
Trees and shrubs have not veiled and claimed 
them again to an identity with nature, for 
only the cactus is at home on these plains and 
slopes. Storm and earthquake have won no 
compromise of their erectness and rectilinear 
power, for they were built to defy storm and 
earthquake. Even the character of their 
decoration is such as to set them farthest from 
any hint of natural objects — not only is it 
geometric as distinguished from the repre- 
sentation of plants and animal forms, but its 
designs are worked out in straight lines. If 
ever architecture spoke, these massive halls 
upon the high ground of Mitla speak for 
their builders, "Behold we were men, and this 
work was our work, not a thing of chance or 
growth; and this our work was greatly done, 
done after a fashion of our devising, done to 
remain." It is estimated that a million tiles, 
or more properly flat stones, went into the 
walls of Mitla thus far uncovered. They con- 
stitute a mosaic that differs from the ordinary 
because the stones are set on edge, and by 
their inequalities of width, projecting one be- 
yond another, form the design in relief. Door- 

104 




ON THE ROAD TO MITLA. 




ZAPOTEC CHILDREN IN RUINS OF MITLA. 



TO MITLA AND BACK 

ways are not arched — a curved arch, even if 
they knew it, would ill have fitted the style of 
these builders; but great stones from fifteen 
to eighteen feet long, five feet wide, and four 
feet thick were placed as lintels and then the 
same deep intricate design was unflinchingly 
carved upon them. The walls were so well 
laid, for the most part without mortar, that 
each stone is perfectly firm in its original 
place and only curious examination discovers, 
even to-day, where carving leaves off and 
mosaic begins. 

There are several great halls, one called the 
hall of monoliths, where are six columns of 
porphyry, fourteen feet high and about seven 
in circumference, having neither capital nor 
pedestal but tapered and rounded toward the 
top in a way that shows artistic thought, and 
is as much a departure from straightness as 
this peculiar style would warrant. 

A little of the colored decoration that re- 
mains where pious Roman priests formerly 
stabled their horses, shows, strangely enough, 
grotesque heads. The heads give to some 
the impression of being grotesque not because 
of incapacity to make them otherwise but 
from conscious design. 

105 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

The ruins of Mitla are large enough to be 
those of a city, yet are not those of a city. 
They may have been related to one as the old 
castle to its village, or they may have been 
only temples or tombs. Whatever the pur- 
pose for which they were built, the men who 
built them in their geometric perfection must 
have done much else that would be worthy of 
attention if known. To have looked af their 
handiwork is to have faced the riddle of the 
ages. 

Leave Mitla, imagine your way retraced to 
where you left the axis between Vera Cruz 
and Mexico, and proceed at last toward the 
capital. Orizaba is the first considerable 
town, girt around with high mountains, well 
wooded. A coffee center and the capital of 
the cotton-weaving industry in Mexico, it is 
best remembered merely as a beautiful hill 
town, the first up from Vera Cruz in which 
fever is practically unknown, the natural first 
station on the journey upward. Here the 
European allies in 1862 by consent of Juarez 
made their first headquarters. 

Up from Orizaba, with its altitude of 4000 
feet, round the famous Maltrata curve, still 
winding steeply up, never down, at every vil- 

106 



I 



TO MITLA AND BACK 

lage buying fruit and baskets of intoxica- 
tingly fragrant gardenias from women and 
girls as dark and comely as Ruth or Rebecca, 
and at a distance of 173 kilometers (110 
miles) from Vera Cruz we shall find ourselves 
on the level of the great plateau. As we 
turn again and again up the incline, villages 
and farms spread like little gardens far below 
us ; and all has a look quite different from that 
in the jungle, of having been long subdued 
to human use. Every path has been beaten 
for centuries by the sandaled or naked feet 
of men and women not belonging to our race, 
but seeming far nearer kin to us now as we 
look thus upon their homes and haunts than 
we had ever before felt them. We find our- 
selves in a critical state of mind, not toward 
the primitive life that has been lived here, 
but toward our own. It seems a pity that, 
while learning a few things of undoubted ad- 
vantage, we should have learned so many 
tending only to complication and unnatural- 
ness. 

As the elevation increases and the air grows 
colder, the Mexican blanket is more and more 
in evidence. The statuesque gives way to the 
picturesque, and the beauty and grace of 

107 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

nature little trammeled or adorned to the dig- 
nity and the humor of umber figures bedecked 
in high colors and draped with the pride of 
grandees. 

On across the plain, all afternoon, passing 
the great prehistoric pyramids of the sun and 
moon at San Juan Teotihuacan, which I have 
seen many a time from car windows, and think 
of as old friends though I never stopped to 
visit them, and so at evening we shall arrive 
at Mexico City, a little giddy from the alti- 
tude, it may be, a little bewildered by kalei- 
doscopic changes, but with a feeling of enrich- 
ment from the experiences of the day. 



108 







HALL OF MONOLIThIC COLUMNS, MITLA. 




PUlfr. OF WliTLA. 



IX 

MEXICO CITY 

THE mingled sounds of hoofs upon as- 
phalt, of street cars, of automobiles de- 
manding the right of way, and of many 
human feet and voices, the downward swoop 
of an elevator, and then the smell of "coffee 
and cut roses" triumphing over that of fresh 
ink on your newspaper — all these that you 
experience at the beginning of your first day 
in Mexico City do not give any overwhelming 
sense of being swung out into far places or of 
being projected backward into the sixteenth 
century. This Mexican Herald has tele- 
graphic columns as long as those of the 
"daily" at home and editorials written in Eng- 
lish as familiar. 

Though it may have been two or three 
weeks since you landed in Vera Cruz, prob- 
ably the tall American with the long nose or 
some equally remembered fellow-passenger 
will be sitting within reach of a nod; and 

109 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

there will be also some of last night's "ar- 
rivals" who will tell you, if you ask, that they 
were just four days coming from Buffalo or 
three from St. Louis, with Pullman and din- 
ing car service all the way. This is rather start- 
ling but is only a prophecy of what will soon 
be accomplished as far as Guatemala and be- 
yond. Already tolerable trains run from 
Gamboa on the Tehuantepec line, southward 
to the Guatemalan border. The Pan-Amer- 
ican system which was the dream of James G. 
Blaine will be in operation, possibly within 
fifteen years, from New York to the great 
ports of South America. 

You are at an American hotel. If you were 
a German or a Frenchman you would be at a 
German or a French hotel and would find 
things as little foreign to you as everything 
here seems to American observation. You 
would still be reading your newspaper in Eng- 
lish, it is likely, but for Germans and French- 
men in Mexico English ceases to be a strange 
tongue. In short, you are in a cosmopolitan 
city. The American population alone is esti- 
mated at 7000. Then there are the English 
and the English-speaking Germans and 
French alluded to just now, and it would be 

110 



MEXICO CITY 

hard to say how many English-speaking 
Mexicans. On the principal business streets 
and in business hours English is heard more 
than Spanish, and more than any other lan- 
guage whatsoever, though man spricht 
Deutsch and p«^^^ Frarifais also with such 
frequency as to denote that other than Amer- 
ican enterprise is at work. 

No city is the center of the United States 
as Mexico City is that of the Mexican repub- 
lic ; it is metropolis, political and financial cap- 
ital, chief seat of learning, publishing center, 
travel center, and heart of the nation in al- 
most every organic way that can be thought 
of. Every one who lives or even winters in 
the republic comes to "the City" from time 
to time. Paradoxically enough, it is one of 
the least Mexican of all places in Mexico. It 
is no place in which to make any detailed first- 
hand study of character and conditions. One 
may, however, do much generalizing here, and 
profit much by the knowledge and observation 
of others. 

London and New York, cosmopolitan as 
they are, have each their marks of nationality, 
so that a traveler awaking in one would hard- 
ly fancy himself in the other. There are so 

111 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

many Germans, Frenchmen, and Americans 
in London, all wearing clothes conformed 
to a world pattern, and so many Ger- 
mans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen in New 
York, all similarly conformed, that an 
off-hand analysis of the human stream on 
a busy thoroughfare might give no clue; but 
there are always signs at hand. The hack- 
man in New York is a different figure from 
the London "cabby," the policeman on Fifth 
Avenue and the "bobby" on Pall Mall do not 
look alike, the New York "sky-scraper" may 
be suggested by individual buildings elsewhere 
but is dominant in the view of no city out- 
side of the United States. Similarly, in Mex- 
ico City, everything official, or institutional, 
or architectural, is Mexican on its face. South 
America, Spain, Palestine, would show like- 
nesses; but I am indicating that cosmopolitan 
appearance and international resemblance dis- 
solve under close examination. There are 
taxicabs; but if a taxicab from Mexico City, 
driver and all, could pass through New York, 
it would be gazed at, even in that blase me- 
tropolis, from Battery Park to Harlem. The 
street cars are of a familiar enough model, 
built in the United States. It is one of the 

112 



MEXICO CITY 

first facts learned that, if not under American 
control, they are under English, and so 
equally far from promising any Mexican as- 
pect. But the motorman and the conductor who 
comes to take your seis centavos (three Amer- 
ican cents) have quite other than Anglo- 
Saxon earmarks. The "running stock" of 
the road, for that matter, would reveal some 
variations if watched long enough, for ex- 
ample — one of the relatively swift things in 
Mexico — an electric hearse, that is a flat car, 
with a black canopy designed for funeral pur- 
poses mounted upon it. Such a car will be 
followed by passenger coaches as many as the 
size of the funeral requires. But I had in- 
tended no description here — only an entry in 
our catalogue of things distinctive. Police- 
men and letter carriers, and, in spite of their 
German uniform, soldiers also, are as Latin- 
American as careful selection could have made 
them if such had been applied. The Amer- 
ican stores as well as the shops with American 
clerks, and those with polyglot French and 
German managers or clerks, or with "Amer- 
ican" speaking Mexican clerks, are non-com- 
mittal enough in a casual view of their stock, 
barring, of course, souvenir photographs and 

113 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

curios ; but look up at almost any of the build- 
ings in which they are housed and you will 
know that you are not in the neighborhood of 
John Wanamaker's or Marshall Field's em- 
porium. 

Even between the crowds in one national 
metropolis and in another the likeness is al- 
ways superficial and confined to certain quar- 
ters. Intermingled with "citizens of the 
world" who almost constitute an international 
type of themselves, and with foreign people 
of business, there are always the clearly in- 
digenous, those who in the nature of things 
would not be where they do not belong. One 
knows them instantly to be the rightful in- 
habitants; and nowhere are they more 
strongly marked than in Mexico, with the 
sandals, the cotton suit of two garments for 
man or woman, the gaudy blanket, the wide 
hat or the rehozo. They appear as free from 
self-consciousness and go as calmly about 
their affairs in Mexico City as in Tehuacan. 
I once saw two imperturbable Aztecs in native 
costume drive a flock of a hundred or more 
turkeys along San Francisco, the most 
bustling street of the capital, using a strip of 
cloth on the end of a stick to direct their 

114 



MEXICO CITY 

feathered charges, and apparently unconscious 
of the varied world around them. One tur- 
key was holding up an injured and bleeding 
foot that had been run over by some car or 
cart, but otherwise things appeared to be mov- 
ing admirably. 

Among the well-to-do one can find the 
native types by noticing who go in and out at 
old houses of settled character, apart from the 
business district. A frame building is almost 
unknown, by reason of which the fire loss is 
practically nothing, though companies of 
"pumpers," that is firemen, are prudently 
maintained. The prevailing style of house in 
Mexico City, as elsewhere in the republic, is 
the hollow square, built of stone or of either 
brick or adobe stuccoed over, with a tunnel 
through the lower story from the street to the 
inner hollow. In other words, it is the Span- 
ish plan. Oriental before it was Spanish, of a 
flat, tile-roofed house of two or three stories 
built around an open court or patio, fronting 
directly on the street and with no outside 
ornament except the window balconies, the 
heavy gratings, and sometimes elaborate carv- 
ing or other adornment on the wooden doors. 
The outside walls, if stuccoed, may be tinted 

115 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

variously; and if the occupants have bad taste 
the effect may be almost as dreadful as they 
would achieve upon a clapboard mansion in 
Illinois. There is no lawn, either in front, 
where space would permit none, or in the 
court, which as often as not is paved 
throughout. This court, however, is usually 
made beautiful by a profusion of plants and 
flowers, occasionally by statuary and foun- 
tains. There are not only the ponderous 
doors at the entrance from the street, but 
grilles at the farther end of what for conven- 
ience we have called the tunnel; and the 
glimpse of the patio that one gets, pleasing as 
a rule even without their enchantment, ac- 
quires from these iron gratings an added 
charm of half concealment such as a lady's 
face may borrow from a veil. The entrance is 
wide enough to admit a coach and pair, with 
purpose, too, for the family coach does actu- 
ally enter. The "carriage house," as we 
should say, and the stables as well, are com- 
monly parts of the house itself. They occupy 
a corner of the lower story, toward the back, 
the servants' quarters occupying the front 
part of this same story. It is true, in a very 
large house, stables may be built on a sec- 

116 



MEXICO CITY 

ond court behind that of the house itself, 
reached by a second "tunnel" at the back. 
The portero, or doorkeeper, is an important 
functionary who, with his family, occupies a 
room, not necessarily blessed with any furni- 
ture, near the door, answers every summons 
on the knocker or bell by day, locks the 
doors about ten o'clock at night, and ex- 
pects a fee if called from his straw mat 
after hours to admit any belated resident 
or visitor. The family live on the sec- 
ond story, where a "corridor" or balcony 
runs completely around, reached by a stair- 
way from the lower court. Here, again, there 
are flowers and foliage plants in pots and 
boxes. This upper veranda is a pleasant 
place, usually affording a sunny side if one is 
chilly or a shady side if the weather seems too 
warm. 

So much we may learn without intrusion or 
undue asking of questions if no introduction 
actually admits us to a house. The people 
who go in and out of these spacious dwellings, 
each of them making as separate an atmos- 
phere for itself as a cloistered monastery, are 
the leisurely, graceful, and dark-skinned dons 
and ladies that we should expect. 

117 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

When we left hotels, restaurants, and shops 
behind, we left most of our American and 
other foreign friends. The foreigners, to be 
sure, do not all live in hotels. There is a 
highly uninteresting colony where various at- 
tempts have been made to transplant Amer- 
ican styles of houses or to compromise be- 
tween these and the established type. Then 
there are hundreds of families that either own 
or hire houses of the Mexican plan, or live in 
viviendas (apartments) as they find them. If 
we stroll by accident into any quarter that has 
been thus invaded, however, we shall soon 
recognize it, and can betake ourselves else- 
where for observation. 



118 



X 

SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 

FOR much that we desire we may make 
the parks our stalking ground. The Zo- 
calo, as it is called, is the real center of 
Mexico City, so far as grouping of interests 
is concerned. One writer has said that in no 
American city are the parks used in any such 
way as in Mexico. Washington is the near- 
est approach to it. A park is a lounging place 
for the idle hours, a promenade for the exhibi- 
tion hours, and a forum for the most interest- 
ing talkative hours of genteel people, to say 
nothing of laborers and others with no dignity 
to maintain. The Zocalo is all this. Then, 
too, around it or within a few minutes' walk 
are the Cathedral, the Flower Market, the 
IS^ational Palace, the City Hall, the Museum, 
the National Academy of Arts (San Carlos), 
the National Pawn Shop, the Thieves' Mar- 
ket, and other objects of admiration or curi- 
osity. All these might be seen between sun- 

119 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

rise and sunset if there were not a somewhat 
troublesome schedule of open and closed days 
for some of them; and yet at almost any of 
them a week could easily be spent. 

Before beginning our career we shall have 
learned the whereabouts of the Alameda, a 
more fashionable park, beyond which the axis 
of interest, so to speak, having run northwest 
from the Zocalo, bends to the southwest and 
runs on to a third park more famous than 
either, two and a half or three miles distant, at 
Chapultepec. 

Time would fail us to do much more than 
check off as "seen and noted" the really in- 
teresting institutions already on our list. The 
Cathedral is the foremost church edifice in 
Mexico, perhaps in North America, cruci- 
form in plan, with two towers that are both 
beautiful and unique, having domes shaped 
like the bells that they support. It occupies 
the site of the principal Aztec pyramid of the 
city and is built, historians say, on founda- 
tions made largely of Aztec carvings, which 
have been found and are still found in great 
numbers whenever excavations are made in 
the vicinity. The Cathedral is a massive 
structure of basalt and gray sandstone in the 

120 



SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 

Spanish Renaissance style, over 390 feet long 
by 180 broad, is known to have cost over two 
millions of dollars, and was ninety-four years 
in building. The decorations and treasures of 
the church, previous to the confiscation by 
Juarez's government, were almost fabulous, 
and even now it is rich in old wood carvings, 
paintings, and other such accessories as could 
not readily be converted into public funds. 
One painting is an undoubted Murillo, two or 
three others may be of the same or equally 
high origin, and a number by native painters 
are good. Mexican onyx in lavish quantities 
enriches the interior, but not to excess, for 
Mexican onyx is of soft rather than dazzling 
beauty, in appearance about equally resem- 
bling wax and marble. There are, as always 
in these churches, many accessory and tem- 
porary things which are gaudy, hideous, and 
altogether out of character, but the general 
effect is powerful enough to overcome their 
presence. Critics who compare it with the 
great churches of Europe regard the Cathe- 
dral as a beautiful and impressive structure, 
characterized on the whole by harmony and 
restraint. 

The middle-class women and such of the 
121 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

wealthy as frequent the place, with their re- 
bozos or mantillas and black garments, are in 
keeping with the architecture, the aged and 
darkened carvings, the pictures, the gigantic 
vellum-bound books, the soft light of the 
candles, and the murmur of the chants. In- 
dians from the rural districts in their bright 
native garb come and kneel to kiss in apparent 
rapture whatever presents itself as inost 
sacred. Their understanding of the differ- 
ence between the religion of their early ances- 
tors and that which they profess is merely 
that a more glorious temple and a superior set 
of divinities, more realistically portrayed, have 
somehow displaced the old ones. "No mat- 
ter," says the broad-minded and indifferent- 
minded dispenser of off-hand reflections, "for 
a half-hour they have been happy. Idolatry 
and superstition appear to be very comfort- 
ing, exalting things." Indeed! Opium also 
is a comforting and exalting thing, at times 
and in certain effects; but to avail oneself 
of its nepenthe has not seemed favor- 
able to personal progress or to bearing 
one's part in the common march forward. 
And how can we prove that progress is 
desirable? We do not try. Samuel John- 

122 



SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 

son was once asked, since the cultivated are 
not all happy and the ignorant not all miser- 
able, how he would argue that knowledge and 
culture are desirable. He answered, in sub- 
stance, that there is no person who has them 
and could be induced to part with them, and 
no person lacking them unless a fool, who fails 
to desire them. Progress commends itself 
directly to the sincere intelligence, and to any 
other it need not ask to be commended. For 
the definition and the proof of progress we 
have no time here. I have seen such peones 
as these emerging from ignorance and super- 
stition to a sense of their own misery — not a 
very agreeable change, you say — but to a 
larger hope for their children, and to a sus- 
taining belief in the dignity of their own 
souls which would neither unqualifiedly admit 
any reprobate or even decent fellow-mortal 
as vicar, nor longer think it right for any gov- 
ernor to hold them as beasts. I have seen them 
exemplify all the simple virtues that smart 
writers deny them, work and sacrifice for 
their new faith, and approach old age and 
death with a less fitful happiness than they 
could draw from myths and fables. 

I speak not as the highly regenerate, not in 
123 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

deference to so-called missionaries who find 
easy places in the balmy tropics and draw 
more money than they could command at 
home, not in apology for missionary secre- 
taries who think the indolent, the languid, or 
the ill-prepared are fit enough to send out. 
But self-sacrificing, high-minded, gifted, and 
wise men and women have built their strength 
and their virtue into the Protestantism of 
Mexico with its hundred thousand adherents, 
and its educated, heroic native pastors living 
on $25 to $40 a month; and any intelligent 
northern man of the white race who has lived 
in Mexico and permits them all to be called to 
naught is unfair. I have known Unitarians to 
contribute up to the full measure of their abil- 
ity to Presbyterian work in Mexico because its 
value was manifest without analysis of doc- 
trines. I have known American Roman 
Catholics to contribute for the work of a 
Methodist missionary because he was doing 
good. They did not consider that they were 
helping to proselyte anybody from Catholi- 
cism as they recognize it. Whether they would 
have been sanctioned by the Vatican I doubt; 
but they made a natural human response to 
things as they found them. 

124 



SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 

American, English, and French Catholics 
visiting the country have repeatedly written 
that Mexican faith, so far as the rank and file 
of the people are concerned, is a dead faith. 
The Aztec religion was highly ceremonial. 
"The introduction of the Roman religion had 
no other effect," according to Humboldt, 
"than to substitute new ceremonies and 
symbols for the rites of a sanguinary wor- 
ship." Catholicism as exemplified by the 
Spaniards was generally at its worst, and as 
propagated among the Indians it was empti- 
ness unqualified. It has improved. I heard 
a priest, not an American nor a Frenchman 
but a young Spaniard from the Philippines, 
after sending a sick man away, with his prof- 
fered fee, to a physician, ask, "How can you 
Protestants consign these poor cattle to either 
Heaven or Hell? They have never been 
taught anything. Surely they will need some 
place of probation." Such honest and rational 
treatment as his will help. The Protestant 
influence will help; Catholicism has improved 
most where Protestantism has been most 
active. There are Mexican Catholic clergy- 
men who admit this. A sermon or some dis- 
course to the people in Spanish is now a very 

125 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

common part of the service; formerly it was 
unusual. Another consideration is that the 
missionaries do not gather adherents solely or 
chiefly from attentive members of the Roman 
church, but very largely from the neglected 
and the unchurched. To suppose that all the 
Mexican people are already Christianized ac- 
cording to the tenets of Romanism is to make 
a blind assumption. Protestant missions are 
as legitimate and almost as sorely needed in 
Mexico as in India; and they entered only 
after urgent entreaty. There is a kind of 
reciprocity involved in whatever work may 
really overlap that of the Roman church, for 
when the establishment in Mexico was the 
richest in the world considerable money was 
sent to help weak and struggling Catholic 
churches in the United States. 

So much of reflection, as we visit and leave 
the greatest religious edifice in Mexico, a city 
of churches in a land of churches. There are 
three hundred in the capital alone, some as 
beautiful and more aristocratic, though not so 
large nor so interesting as the Cathedral. The 
most popular one of all is the church on 
Guadalupe Hill, not in the city at all, prop- 
erly speaking, but a little more than two miles 

126 



SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 

out to the northeast, in a hne parallel with the 
shore of the gradually receding salt Lake 
Texcoco. Here, in 1531, when some effective 
sign was needed to turn the natives from their 
old religion, a miraculous lady appeared to 
Juan Diego, a poor villager. She was in fact 
the Virgin Mary ; but the identity is not much 
emphasized. There are tens of thousands to 
whom the Lady of Guadalupe, or simply 
"Guadalupe," means more than all the other 
sacred beings in their category. Her like- 
ness as she appeared in a luminous cloud was 
kindly left with Juan along with some magical 
roses on his mantle and is as familiar through- 
out Mexico as the national coat of arms. Why 
not, as she is the acknowledged patron saint? 
The chapel which is her shrine cost a million 
and a half dollars gold and contains precious 
things and sacred relics of great additional val- 
ue, including the miraculous picture. This is 
the most frequented shrine in North America, 
not excepting Ste. Anne de Beaupre near 
Quebec. It is the source of marvelous cures 
for which the ignorant in thousands, and the 
less ignorant in scores, come hundreds of 
miles. On December 12th, the special day set 
apart in its honor, when the weary and wistful 

127 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

devotees throng out by every means of con- 
veyance, as well as on foot, different onlookers 
may have different feelings but scarcely any 
one can view the strange procession unmoved. 

Let us return to the vicinity of the Zocalo. 
The simple and impressionable Indian was 
always a lover of flowers. He brought flowers 
as well as vegetables through the canals that 
led to this very spot — to the old city of* Te- 
nochtitlan on the shore of a lake now disap- 
peared. He still knows how to tend them and 
to mass them in seductive array. The Flower 
Market of Mexico City in early morning is a 
place to go and see roses, poppies, and other 
flowers really abundant for once, and at 
prices, despite the tourist "bulling" of the 
market, that should make a New York florist 
feel highly compassionate, or very much 
ashamed. Sweet peas enough to fill a wash- 
bowl, spicy and fresh, may be had for a 
nickel. NTor do they become contemptible for 
their cheapness or their abundance, here in 
the hands of these romantic children of the 
sun. 

The Thieves' Market is another place where 
variety is inconceivable, where beauty and 
precious values may be present though in am- 

128 



SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 

bush, and where romance, albeit of a different 
sort, may easily spin its web. Who wore these 
jewels before some enterprising thief at much 
risk claimed them for display here? Or what 
enterprising rogue had them made for the ex- 
press purpose of barter with the "Gringo"? 
What hands lovingly caressed this old book, 
yellowed with years, and what deft fingers em- 
broidered this gossamerlike shawl of silk? 
Were yonder little shoes taken ruthlessly from 
baby feet or did their owner outgrow them or 
perchance move to a country where none are 
ever needed? What happj'^ and confident 
bride concealed her blushes and eager tears 
behind this veil? To what treasuries did this 
great hand-made and joyously elaborated key 
once give entrance? This little old painting 
with its wonderful amber varnish, cracked 
but luminous, over the glory of color — who 
painted his life into it? A place for fancies 
is the Thieves' Market. One of the most 
curious things that happens is not rare, 
namely, that some one who loses an article of 
value goes forthwith to the Mercado del Vo- 
lador and makes it his own again for a tithe 
of what it first cost him. 

The Pawn Shop, or "Mount of Piety," here 
129 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

as everywhere under the sun, is a varied mu- 
seum illustrating the separableness of im- 
provident man from his belongings and those 
of his wife and children. But this pawn shop, 
at least in intent, is a beneficent institution. 
It is not managed in the interest of the pound 
of flesh. A rich man, in 1775, seeing how the 
common people were robbed by money lend- 
ers, gave a fund to endow a concern which 
should loan upon a given article something 
approaching its value, charge only a fair rate 
of interest, and make redemption of it as easy 
as possible. The national government recog- 
nized what appeared to be the merit of such 
a scheme and made an appropriation to ex- 
tend it, not only in Mexico City, but else- 
where in the larger towns of the Republic. 
The "good loan shark," by the way, has just 
arrived in the United States, ushered in by 
the Russell Sage Foundation, one hundred 
and thirty odd years after it came into use in 
Mexico. 

At the Academy of San Carlos and also at 
the National Museum are some of the worst 
paintings that can be imagined, and they are 
the first that a visitor is likely to see. Flesh 
tints, always constituting one of the crucial 

130 



SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 

tests in portrait or figure painting, were a new 
thing to be reckoned with when the skin of 
the Indian and the mixed breed was to be 
painted, and some of these dignitaries have 
the complexion of an old whetstone or of a 
white man who has survived a gunpowder ex- 
plosion. When you have seen the best of the 
work here, however, you will have seen a tri- 
umph that for veracity may rank a little 
higher or a little lower than the successful 
treatment of the blonde or the near-blonde 
that we call brunette, but which for intrinsic 
beauty goes beyond comparison. It is not the 
color of a chestnut, nor of glowing varnish 
upon an old violin, it is not the color of gold 
bronze, it has no exact representation in ivory, 
nor in ancient vellum ; but if a composite of all 
these could be made, one who has no technical 
knowledge of color and who avoids consider- 
ing too severely may imagine that the result 
would be something like this. He knows, if 
he has seen Indians of the finer types, that 
whatever the ingredients of this color they 
have found them. The Mexican artists too 
have found them, and have found the counter- 
feit of life which makes their pictures speak 
and move. 

131 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

A great deal of the riches in art that once 
abounded in Mexico was destroyed or taken 
away during the French usurpation, and some 
of it suffered during the civil wars. Yet there 
are old masterpieces here to repay the pilgrim- 
age of an art lover from New York. Murillo, 
Zurbaran, Rubens, Titian, Guido Reni, Juan 
de Carreno, are all represented. It is not 
such importations, however, but the work of 
the early and the modern Mexican schools that 
will make the most striking impress on a visi- 
tor whose thought is full of Mexico. If any 
single picture ought to be specially mentioned 
it is perhaps that by Parra of Father Las 
Casas, the Pere Marquette of Mexico, pro- 
tecting the Indians. It is of heroic size, splen- 
didly conceived and feelingly executed, be- 
longs to the modern school, and is Mexican in 
subject, representing an incident in the con- 
quest. As for the best piece, there is no best 
one among such a collection. Noble in qual- 
ity, both when religious scenes are depicted 
and when original and distinctively Mexican 
subjects are treated, most impressive in num- 
ber and spread of canvas, superbly hung and 
lighted, the pictures in the San Carlos gallery 
exalt and transport the visitor of average re- 

132 



SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 

sponsiveness as few arrays of paintings in the 
whole world, probably, will do. It is not the 
awe of venerable old pictures but the glory, 
the opulence, the vivid palpitating joy, loveli- 
ness, grief, courage oftlife which startles. It 
is intimate, though in type or incident we 
might describe it as romantic or strange. It 
fits into what one has tried to actualize when 
going up and down among the Mexicans. It 
fuses the ideal, the romantic, with the real of 
the sight-seeing of yesterday. Whether one 
should desire to see these pictures by Echave, 
Cabrera, Iberra, Obregon, Gutierrez, Ortega, 
and Felix Parra as early as possible, so as to 
carry their vision into one's observation, or 
whether it is better to have seen first with 
half-illumined eyes and matter-of-fact mind 
would be difficult to decide. 

The National Museum has its collection of 
pictures, numerous and valuable, but of no 
such account as those of the National Acad- 
emy of San Carlos. It has ethnological and 
geological and zoological exhibits; but it is 
for the Aztec and other antiquities of prehis- 
toric Mexico that the museum will be most 
remembered. The archaeological section can 
be seen and a very strong impression got of 

133 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

it in a half-hour. For it has specimen after 
specimen of colossal-sized carving in porphyry 
and trachyte rock, the character of which will 
make itself felt at a glance. Is this the West- 
ern world? Are we sure we are not in a mu- 
seum of Bible lands, and of lands that Xeno- 
phon and Csesar described? Here are near 
cousins, surely, to the gods and demigods, 
demons and grotesqueries, of Egypt, India, 
Assyria. A wise scholar may tell us that this 
great figure of Chac Mol is nothing like a 
sphinx, that his head faces wrong, that his 
body is not that of a lion but of a man, etc., 
but we have seen a resemblance that will not 
be explained away. The professor may tell 
us that other figures do not resemble the squat 
Buddha. The professor knows too much. 
We see the resemblance. The professor has 
almost become brother to the monoliths^ and 
he distinguishes them all according to their 
individual marks. It needs some one not of 
the family to take in resemblances at a flash. 
Such an outsider knows when he sees them, 
usually. There are Ethiopian types here, as 
unmistakable as a photograph of the stalwarts 
who helped Roosevelt weigh his dead lioness in 
Africa. There are faces that are Mongolian, 

134 



STONE CALENDAR OF THE AZTECS. 



SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 

if we ever saw any such, and others that are 
Semitic. We who are not learned are sure as 
we stand here that the natives of pre-historic 
Mexico had more than one connection with 
the civilizations of the ancient East, if in fact 
they did not originate them. Asked which of 
the various theories as to origin we believe, we 
shall probably declare, "All of them." Nor 
shall we be without learned support in our 
conviction. 

A stone calendar weighing twenty-four tons 
shows that the Aztec year had eighteen 
months of twenty days each, like that of the 
Egyptians, with an extra period of five days 
to complete the astronomical round, and in its 
proper time a leap year. This, and another 
huge cylinder believed to have been a sacri- 
ficial stone, are both admirably carved and of 
very hard material. 

The National Palace, in part of which the 
Museum is housed, is both old and new, hav- 
ing been begun in 1692 and altered from time 
to time ever since; and it is a rather imposing 
structure. 

At the southwest corner of the Zocalo is the 
ancient City Hall, "restored" for the Cen- 
tennial Fete in September, 1910. Within its 

135 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

confines regular meetings of the City Council 
have been held for 350 years. 

On the site of the present Zocalo or Plaza 
Mayor the Aztec priests found the symbolic 
eagle on the cactus, and here they made the 
center of their town. It was here that Cor- 
tez found the chief teocalli, about where the 
Cathedral now stands, and here some oJP the 
fiercest fighting was done. This center, the 
"Aztec forum," became also the center of 
the Spanish town which immediately began to 
grow, the waterways about it being filled up 
to make streets. Little by little, through the 
centuries, the lakes have receded, the canals 
have been filled, more or less successful drain- 
age has been effected, until it is harder to con- 
ceive the ancient city, with waterways regu- 
larly intersecting its streets, and beyond, upon 
the two "inland seas," one salt, one fresh, the 
myriad canoes bringing in their tribute, — this 
is even harder than to imagine Ely or some 
of the other cathedral towns of England as 
formerly upon islands. 

The drainage canal which makes the chief 
guarantee of security against flood and fever, 
was contemplated as early as the fourteenth 
century, begun in 1607, abandoned and re- 

136 



SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 

begun under different authorities, including 
that of Maximilian, and at last finished by 
President Diaz, in 1896, at a cost of sixteen 
million dollars. It does not prevent the soil 
from being marshy, so that cellars are impos- 
sible and the death rate, though reduced from 
60 per thousand to 18 per thousand, is still 
more than it would be if the city were on 
higher ground not far away. One may give 
only qualified belief to the theory that vagrant 
cows trod out the city plan of Boston; but 
clearly enough the site of Mexico was deter- 
mined when jealous neighbors of the Aztecs 
would not let them settle anywhere else. Why 
the Spaniards clung to the unwholesome choice 
is less clear. One viceroy in the sixteenth 
century asked permission of the crown to move 
the capital to a better situation where are now 
the suburbs of San Angel and Tacubaya ; but 
by that time, so far had growth proceeded, 
the change would have cost $50,000,000 and 
it was forbidden by the ungenerous monarch 
as impractical. 

The Alameda, the other center, is a more 
aristocratic park, very beautiful, and associa- 
ted in sentiment with Carlota, who did much 
to improve it. Just before reaching it, on the 

137 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

way from the Zocalo, one sees the only mod- 
erately impressive though very costly post 
office, too much lightened and weakened in ap- 
pearance by broken surfaces and open spaces 
near the top, but really one of the best post- 
office buildings in the world. The interior 
provokes no criticism. Its superb marble, 
Italian bronze gratings, and richness of mate- 
rial throughout, together with the general 
plan, suggest a building for some art purpose 
rather than for the business of a government 
department ; but it serves no less well for that. 
The eight-million-dollar theater at the east 
end of the Alameda is a thing to challenge ad- 
miration at once. Let us hope no one will 
insist on gilding its statuary or otherwise ruin- 
ing its delicate beauty. Its curtain, a wonder- 
full glass mosaic picture of the mountains 
Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, as they loom 
before the city, was made by Tiffany in New 
York. One cannot help wondering what use 
will be made of so fine a theater when it is 
finished, seeing that Mexico has no drama 
worthy of the name and no native actors 
worth mentioning. Suggestion has been made 
and I think a semi-official promise been given 
that first-class companies from the United 

138 



SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 

States will be offered the use of the building 
free, except for the cost of lighting. If the 
government does this, the educative effect 
should be considerable. Good opera, indeed, 
especially Italian opera, is already heard and 
appreciated — I heard Tetrazzini in Mexico 
before she had ever sung in New York. How- 
ever, every Latin- American capital must have 
its costly national theater, so why cavil as to 
what shall be done with it? It is a conven- 
tional ornam.ent. To speculate on what could 
have been done in the way of model tenements 
with the millions spent -here is equally idle. 
The tenements will come; and the children of 
the poor will be taught to live otherwise than 
wallowing in filth. For the beautifully clean 
asphalt streets of Mexico do run close to only 
half -hidden wretchedness with which the worst 
negro alley in our own vaunted Washington 
is not to be compared. The people are not 
descended from the cleanly Mayas, but from 
the less scrupulous Aztecs; they have long 
been living in conditions alien to them, of 
which they are neither the makers nor the mas- 
ters and which give little room for dignified 
human life. So in looking at them one is 
grateful for visions of the people in the mar- 

139 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

ket of Tehuantepec, or even, oppressed as 
they are, those in the fields of Yucatan. 

Let us not be accused of wandering far 
from the Alameda, for, as just intimated, we 
have turned but a little aside. 

I was happy enough to know this lovely 
park when one could pass all along it without 
being startled, amazed, and shocked by the 
colossal statue of Juarez which now fronts 
Avenida Juarez at about the middle point of 
the southern edge. Colossal as is the statue, 
one feels what must be the instant effect when 
a great wreath, not of marble but of gold, is 
clapped down upon its head by one of the like- 
wise colossal angels. There are urns, also of 
gold, that claim at least as much attention as 
the central figure, and there are two lions be- 
ing relentlessly crushed by a weight on the 
small of their backs. One fancies that some 
enemy of Juarez must have had to do with this 
hideous perpetration. If the gold leaf could 
be all removed, the total effect would be less 
than half as bad. 

The Juarez statue is representative of 
many things. Mexican aptitude for drawing, 
design, pen-work, wood carving, painting and 
all allied arts, on the side of mere facility, is 

140 



SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 

almost unbelievable to an American. There 
is hardly a school where some boy cannot 
draw the teacher either in likeness or in carica- 
ture as he chooses. There is no church society 
or other little local group that cannot have a 
memorial or memento nicely engrossed with- 
out going outside its own membership. The 
love of color and of ornament is everywhere. 
So it is with music. Every village has its 
brass band. The tattered peons will stand 
for hours listening to music that, in the United 
States, would be too good to be popular. The 
military bands of Mexico play not only with 
zest, but with soul, and are acknowledged to 
be among the best in the world. To hear the 
national anthem played as they often play it 
is to hear a thing which will never be for- 
gotten. But restraint of taste seems lacking 
among rich and poor, ignorant and educated. 
Women overdress. Men make display pup- 
pets of themselves. Apart from the outside 
severity of the conventional dwelling, architec- 
ture tends to the ornate, the overglorified. 
This is not a universal indictment ; it is a state- 
ment of general observation. The emotional 
susceptibility, the responsiveness, the manual 
dexterity, the mental ingenuity, and the tem- 

141 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

peramental patience being undoubtedly pres- 
ent, there would seem reason to hope that 
increase of general culture, and a fuller 
liberation of the spirit of the nation as democ- 
racy advances, will bring in larger creative- 
ness than we matter-of-fact Americans have 
yet attained. The really superb achievements 
in painting at times when conditions weve at 
all favorable, are a promise of this. Sculp- 
ture, of course, is a severer test, and architec- 
ture the severest of all. 

Up and down the Alameda on Sunday 
morning walk the "quality" of Mexico City, 
listening to the best band in the Republic. On 
Sunday afternoon the same people ride be- 
hind Kentucky-bred and other thoroughbred 
horses, though usually in quaint, comfortable 
carriages, out past the Alameda, along the 
Paseo de la Reforma, past the great bronze 
statue of Charles V of Spain, and that of the 
valiant Cuauhtemoc, through splendid avenues 
of trees, to Chapultepec. To Chapultepec, in 
a hired coach, an inexpensive thing in Mexico 
City, let us betake ourselves. There, at sun- 
down, leaning over a parapet on one of the 
inclined approaches to the castle, aware of its 
reminiscent though not dreadful shadow be- 

142 



i 



SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 

hind us, aware of the sad, sempiternal great 
trees below, we will gaze off to the tender 
color and stupendous bulk of Popocatepetl 
and his consort, the White Lady (Ixtacci- 
huatl), as they float in the haze and last glow 
of evening. Here Montezuma took his ease. 
He must have walked often at nightfall under 
those same trees, which are a thousand years 
old. Here Maximilian and Carlota dreamed 
their dreams. Here, it may be, American 
soldier boys, in 1847, rested after a not too 
glorious fray and forgot to question the 
wherefore of present commands in musing 
upon "the old woe of the world." Change has 
written its record here as surely if not in as 
hard characters as on the Palatine or the Ac- 
ropolis. Yet the cypress trees live and grow, 
with a kind of melancholy vigor which proph- 
esies long continuance and succession of their 
kind to witness the coming and the passing 
of many another generation and perhaps still 
changing races of men. 

Those who profess to know a gay capital 
when they see it declare that Mexico City is 
not such. It has its clubs, its cafes, its showy 
balls, its handsome women, its glare of lights 
at night, its bullfight on Sunday in the 

143 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

largest bull ring in the world, and its various 
other pleasures and vices. Its people are 
vivacious and, in the main, happy even when 
a political cloud of dread omen hangs over 
them. Hardly any people can be more lavish 
in expenditure for play or more extravagantly 
overdressed. 

That a strain of seriousness, bordering on 
melancholy, and quite distinct from the heavy 
solemnity ascribed to the English in proverbs, 
does seem present even in their enjoyment 
cannot be denied. So perhaps Mexico is not 
a gay capital. I am sure that neither New 
York nor Washington is gay. Perhaps Paris 
or Monte Carlo, analytically considered, is 
not. Nothing is gay that is not naive, spon' 
taneous, youthful; and Mexico has memories 
enough to make it old. 



14* 



XI 

THE GOVERNMENT 

IT has already been said that the national 
memory of Mexico before the coming of 
Cortez is largely tradition. The country 
was under the baneful domination of Spain 
from 1521, when the subjugation of the Az- 
tecs was completed, to 1821, when Augustin 
de Iturbide, sent to suppress a revolution, led 
his forces over to the insurgents and became 
the first head of independent Mexico. There 
had been uprisings before, notably one in 
1910, led by Miguel Hidalgo, a priest, whose 
statue adorns some public square in almost 
every Mexican city; but the movements had 
succeeded only in creating and increasing a 
desire for independence. There had been at- 
tempts, too, on the part of some governors 
and viceroys to mitigate the condition of the 
people and suppress the worst abuses of the 
clergy. On the whole, however, the Spanish 
rule in Mexico, as in every other Spanish 

145 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

colony, was one of avarice, hardness, religious 
bigotry, and coercion. Perhaps the Inquisi- 
tion was never practised in more devilish op- 
position to the principles it invoked than here. 
In no land have the people shown more of the 
stuff of which martyrs are made, whether in 
the cause of patriotism or in that of true re- 
ligion. Initiative, though often strikingly 
shown, may at times have been lacking, but 
never the resolution to suffer and to persevere. 
With the accession of Iturbide, who became 
the first Emperor, the Inquisition at least 
passed away. Other benefits were slower in 
coming. 

China and Russia alone were greater in ex- 
tent than the empire of which Iturbide found 
himself in command. It included Honduras 
to the south, and to the northward set up 
claims on the western half of the continent 
even as far as the present border of Canada. 
There were as yet, however, neither settled 
principles of control, nor any means of 
developing this almost inconceivable realm. 
Through massacre and war, the Aztec empire 
of thirty million souls had shrunk to a popula- 
tion of fifteen millions. Soundness could not 
be attained in a moment, even had the new ad- 

146 



THE GOVERNMENT 

ministration been the wisest. Disintegration 
began. Scarcely a year passed before Gua- 
temala seceded, and already a formidable re- 
publican movement had got under way. An- 
tonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who had helped 
Iturbide to break the Spanish rule, now pro- 
claimed the end of Iturbide's own power and 
the establishment of a republic. This was at 
the end of 1822. 

With many ups and downs and much of 
intermittent warfare, the Mexican republic 
was maintained from 1822 to 1864, when the 
French interfered. During this period not 
only had Guatemala seceded, but Texas, on 
account of impatience among American set- 
tlers with the erratic and intolerant ways of 
President Santa Anna, and influenced by the 
Southern party of the United States, had de- 
clared its independence. The war against the 
"North Americans" had been fought unsuc- 
cessfully, and more than a half million square 
miles of territory outside of Texas had been 
relinquished as a forfeit of the struggle. 
Santa Anna, after a downfall and a return to 
power, had sold still another fifty thousand 
square miles to the United States. Yet in- 
ternally the nation improved; Santa Anna 

147 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

had been thrust out at last in 1855 and the 
dictatorship — for so it was — gave place to an 
actual republic. Benito Juarez, first as Min- 
ister of Justice, then as President, formulated 
what William H. Seward called the best plan 
of government ever devised. True, to make 
his admittedly right plans effective involved 
a struggle, the end of which was not to be in 
his lifetime, nor perhaps in ours. It was part 
of a world struggle to establish the right of 
all human creatures, not only to political and 
religious liberty, but also to some freedom in 
the exercise of their own productive powers 
and a share in the bounty of nature. The 
people, however, made their loyalty to Juarez 
unmistakable, and no more hopeful sign could 
have developed than the growth of an en- 
lightened, consistent public sentiment, A 
new Constitution was adopted in 1857. The 
jurisdiction of ecclesiastical and military 
courts over civil cases was declared at an end, 
an evil which Iturbide's constitution had not 
even sought to remove. Religious toleration 
was guaranteed, the separation of church and 
state was declared, the control of the church 
over cemeteries was denied, the right of the 
church to possess landed property was abol- 

148 



THE GOVERNMENT 

ished, civil marriage was instituted. The ne- 
cessity for the two last-named measures may 
well be explained at this point. The Roman 
Catholic Church in Mexico, while the people 
still lived in abject poverty, was the richest 
church establishment in the world, owning 
then over one-third of the total wealth of the 
nation, or about $300,000,000 worth of prop- 
erty. Even Roman Catholics, outside the re- 
actionary group, admit that such a state of 
affairs is not desirable. Madame Calderon 
de la Barca, herself a devout Catholic, gave 
warning as early as 1841 that if reforms were 
not made by the church itself, they would be 
forced upon it, and that its cathedrals would 
perhaps be turned to "meeting houses" by 
Mexico's neighbors from the north. Regard- 
ing marriage, it is a curious reflection that this 
sacrament, first instituted to meet the needs of 
the alienated classes, to whom the old Roman 
law denied the right, had in Mexico and other 
Spanish countries been made so expensive that 
the poor could no longer afford it. Many 
thousands of children were illegitimately born 
because their parents could not pay the ex- 
tortionate fees of the clergy. The institution 
of civil marriage did away with this to a great 

149 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

extent, and to-day no marriage in Mexico has 
legality except the civil marriage. The church, 
however, dissuaded or intimidated many from 
availing themselves of civil marriage, as in- 
deed it does in many cases to-day. Similarly, 
the papal authorities threatened excommuni- 
cation to all who professed liberal ideas. 
Juarez answered by banishing the bishops, the 
Papal Nuncio, and the Spanish representa- 
tive. Though civil war followed^ the pos- 
sibility of rallying the friends of liberty by an 
appeal to the people and of defying supersti- 
tion was proved. 

In 1861 Napoleon III, seeing the United 
States on the verge of civil war and unable to 
enforce the Monroe Doctrine, conceived a 
gigantic scheme for the re-establishment of 
Latin power in the New World. He would 
recognize the Southern Confederacy and 
strengthen it by all means in his power. He 
even held out to the Southern party the sug- 
gestion that if they should set up and make 
firm an independent confederacy, a union of 
Mexico with it would be favored in Europe. 
A considerable party in Mexico desired this 
extension of what had already happened to 
Texas. Mexican refugees and reactionaries 

150 



THE GOVERNMENT 

in France viewed it with no favor, preferring 
a French protectorate; and Napoleon was 
treating with them while he falsely professed 
to favor the other plan. So the wily Bona- 
parte helped to precipitate the American civil 
war. To England he represented the desir- 
abilitj^ of limiting the power of the United 
States, but concealed his dream of a Latin 
and Roman Catholic empire. To Spain he 
revealed this dream of his but professed an in- 
tention that he seems never to have enter- 
tained — that of placing a Spanish prince on 
the throne. To Austria he divulged more fully 
the plan afterward attempted — that of com- 
pensating Austria for recent injuries which 
he had inflicted, by placing a representative of 
the Hapsburg line over the new empire; but 
even to Austria he did not emphasize his in- 
tention that France should control the puppet 
thus set up. 

The pretext for definite action came when 
Juarez, as President of Mexico, announced 
that nothing could be paid and that no at- 
tempt would be made to pay anything on the 
Mexican national debt for two years. This 
was not repudiation and financiers have de- 
clared it as sound a thing as, in the impover- 

151 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

ished condition of the country, lie could have 
done. Two years of peace would enable him, 
he thought, to resume payment. Unfortu- 
nately, however, the announcement gave a 
pretext for France, Spain, and England, all 
creditors, to pounce down upon him. The 
United States, also a creditor, refused a tardy 
invitation to join them, and announced its 
readiness to loan money to Mexico if desired. 
A military expedition started in 1861, but 
England and Spain almost immediately 
learned that they were being duped and with- 
drew. Juarez was able to rally a stronger 
support and maintain a greater resistance 
than had been anticipated. The United 
States, which had steadfastly recognized the 
little Indian statesman's government and re- 
fused to recognize the usurper, astounded all 
Europe by the resources put forth in dealing 
with the Southern secession. Even the South 
itself, incensed at Napoleon's trickery, turned 
from him and his schemes. Certain politicians 
went so far as to propose that North and 
South make a truce till their united armies 
could sweep the French invaders into the sea. 
It was an exaggeration to declare, as has been 
done, that either President Davis or President 

152 



THE GOVERNMENT 

Lincoln favored this. The idea was consider- 
ably discussed, however, which fact in itself 
shows that unanimity of American feeling re- 
garding Mexico had come to be assumed pre- 
vious to Lee's surrender. The "Emperor" 
Maximilian, for whom, with his beautiful 
young wife, Carlota, an appropriation of 
about a million dollars a year had been made 
from the hypothetical resources of a dis- 
tracted, oppressed, and bankrupt nation, had 
proved equal only to the ornamental and cere- 
monial requirements of his office. So of all 
the deceived and disappointed parties to the 
whole scheme, barring the unhappy Maxi- 
milian and Carlota, no one was more disap- 
pointed and humiliated than Napoleon III. 
The civil war in the United States being at an 
end, and emphatic demands for the evacuation 
of Mexico being made by the American Secre- 
tary of State, he felt obliged to comply. The 
pretty Emperor and Empress refusing to 
join in this, he abandoned them. Maximilian 
was captured and shot at Queretaro, June 19, 
1867, and Carlota, after a vain journey and 
appeal to both Napoleon and the Pope, went 
mad. The Mexican people have always re- 
garded the lily-fair prince and his beautiful 

153 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

wife as unfortunate rather than as astute and 
sinister figures. 

Now comes the most problematic turn in 
Mexican history. Juarez returned to the cap- 
ital and took up the details of government as 
nearly as possible where they had been inter- 
rupted five years before. One of his strong- 
est military supporters had been General Por- 
firio Diaz, whose patron and friend he was 
from the time when Diaz, as a boy, entered 
the law school at Oaxaca. He had trusted 
and befriended Diaz all along, and the 
younger man's loyalty up to this time seems 
not to be questioned. So far as the tangle of 
diverging stories and deliberate coloring of 
records will permit a foreigner easily to 
judge, the military service of the young man 
had been of highest value. He had displayed 
courage, foresight, astuteness, and almost in- 
credible vigor. Up to this time the relations 
of the two men were such as coming genera- 
tions in Mexico might have looked upon with 
pride and gratitude. Juarez, however, was 
not only an enemy of church domination and 
of foreign domination, he was also an enemy 
of military domination. Himself a repre- 
sentative in blood, experience, and tradition 

154 



THE GOVERNMENT 

of the class who had, perhaps, sacrificed more 
than any other for the maintenance of the 
nation, he firmly believed in their capacity, if 
they could have wise, patriotic leadership for 
a few years, to learn self-government. His 
critics regard him as a doctrinaire in this, 
and point not only to the untutored condition 
of the Indians, but to the fact that the mil- 
itary leaders who had helped to sustain the 
government must of course be reckoned with. 
They were sure, in view of their habits, to de- 
mand larger rewards than could accrue under 
a democratic government. Such demands they 
did in fact promptly make. What more 
simple and natural than that the country 
should be divided into military departments, 
that each general should be given a depart- 
ment from which he could farm revenues and 
in which he might administer government as 
he chose, and that the only return demanded 
should be unfailing payment of a quota, un- 
failing military support when needed, and un- 
failing assent to all the acts of the central 
government at all times? The plan of Juarez 
was undeniably more complex and far more 
difiicult, one of the difficulties being that the 
generals would declare war on him if he did 

155 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

not satisfy them. He chose the harder way. 
Diaz refused to follow, artfully declaring that 
he could but sympathize with his old com- 
panions in arms, as years of service had un- 
fitted them for high place in democratic civil 
life. He could by no means take the sword 
against them, he said, and the nation was not 
ready for the higher course. 

Assuming that Juarez was right, had he 
been heartily supported by Diaz, there is little 
doubt that Diaz would in due time have been 
chosen president upon the same platform. He 
stood second to Juarez in national promi- 
nence, and as a military figure had no equal. 
Supposing that Juarez was wrong, on the 
other hand, it seems strange that Diaz's with- 
drawal and later his active opposition in arms 
never accomplished the downfall of the little 
Indian idealist. Harassed by some whose 
support would have comforted and enor- 
mously aided him, nevertheless, until he died 
suddenly in 1872, five years after the depart- 
ure of the French, fifteen years after his first 
elevation to the presidency, and seventeen 
years after he had announced the Juarez law 
concerning courts of justice, Juarez was able 
to maintain his government through that pub- 

156 



0^^ 




PORFIRIO DIAZ. 



THE GOVERNMENT 

lie support on which he relied. At Juarez's 
death, there was perhaps only one other man 
capable of weathering the storms to which 
the presidential office was subjected. In 
1876, after four troublous years, in which he 
himself led part of the disturbances, Porfirio 
Diaz became president, and with the nominal 
exception of one four-year term, he ruled the 
country thenceforth for thirty-five years, till 
the spring of 1911. He had come in, how- 
ever, upon a different principle from that of 
Juarez, and by a different principle he ruled. 
The material development, which means also 
the exploitation of the national resources by 
foreign capital, was phenomenal. The main- 
tenance of order in spite of unsuccessful up- 
risings of which a censored press told little, 
was, on the whole, either commendable or 
sinister, according to the point of view, but in 
either case was effective. Foreign capital and 
foreign settlers were encouraged to partic- 
ipate in the wealth of the country. It was 
even said that an Englishman, a German, or 
an American could enjoy under Diaz more 
security in his business enterprise than any 
native might feel, and conduct his enterprises 
on better terms than any native not belonging 

157 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

to the official governmental group. Mean- 
while, the friends of the deposed ruler argue 
that everything possible has been done to edu- 
cate the masses and make them ready for 
what Juarez proclaimed fifty years ago — a 
democratic government. There is a school in 
every municipality of the Republic and 
2,000,000 children, they declare, are in the 
public schools — by no means an incredible 
figure. Assuming that progress is being made, 
the foreign observer is inevitably brought to 
feel that after thirty-five years of military 
despotism, the common people have much left 
to desire, and even if inclined to think that 
the dream of Juarez was impractical, he will 
still wish that it might have come true. As 
for the people themselves, in so far as they 
rise to the level of intelligent belief, they are 
enthusiastic, persistent, and unwavering in 
their assertion that, given a leader of the 
Juarez school, they could have realized 
Juarez's program. Ultimately, of course, a 
people will obtain for themselves a govern- 
ment approximating what they deserve and 
have intelligence to appreciate. The Mexi- 
cans have always coveted better than they 
have had, and have never admitted that the 

158 



THE GOVERNMENT 

iron hand of irresponsible power was toler- 
able. That President Diaz, though strong, 
efficient, and it may be patriotic in motives, 
was ever in all his "unanimous" elections 
really the object of popular choice, has only 
the flimsiest appearance of verity. His final 
election in 1910 was a caricature. The op- 
position forces had been shattered by the ar- 
bitrary and forcible breaking up of their meet- 
ings, the imprisonment of their leaders, and 
the intimidation by soldiers at the polls of 
voters with the hardihood to present them- 
selves. The defenders of the government 
profess that a dignified and peaceful cam- 
paign would have been tolerated. Those in- 
terested in it, and many foreign witnesses as 
well, have declared that the campaign was 
notable for self-restraint under trying condi- 
tions. However that may be, an actual elec- 
tion was not permitted. The president, 
through members of his cabinet, had been 
warned that if the nation were thwarted then, 
revolution would follow. Uprisings did occur 
at once following the so-called re-election and 
within a few weeks took on serious propor- 
tions. 

Travel and much inquiry in pacific quarters 
159 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

of the country during the struggle warrant 
me in the assertion that discontent was almost 
universal. Fundamentally its cause was eco- 
nomic; unjust division of benefits, preposter- 
ously unequal distribution of taxes, and out- 
rageous dispossession of small land owners 
from their ancestral homes, being averred. 
But the immediate demand was for political 
reform. The progressive movement harks 
back to the little Indian legislator of 1855 as 
its prophet. 

Up to the present there is only one name in 
all their annals, the mention of which will 
bring an emotional response of pride and ven- 
eration among Mexican citizens from the 
northern to the southern end of the country — 
one name that they delight to put beside that 
of Washington, who might have been a king, 
but who would not — and that is the name of 
Juarez. So strong has this sentiment been 
all along, that the president and every repre- 
sentative of the government, ignoring the his- 
toric relation of their regime to his, must join 
with what heart they could in the annual and 
occasional demonstrations of it. If a second 
name is put with that of Juarez in any spon- 
taneous way, it is that of the patriot priest 

160 



THE GOVERNMENT 

and first great martyr of Mexican liberty, 
Hidalgo. The time may come when, for a 
widely different service, a more qualified ap- 
preciation will be given to Porfirio Diaz with 
something like the same general accord; but 
the time is not yet. For better or worse he 
has had his day and the future will judge 
him. The revolution of 1911 was not directed 
against an old man whose control could no 
longer be more than nominal and whom the 
people would have been willing to let die in 
peace, it was directed against those who might 
pretend to be his logical successors without 
having demonstrated the only right that can 
ever justify despotism, the right of might. 
Such right in his years of early vigor Porfirio 
Diaz proved in a remarkable degree. Such 
right will have to be shown by his successors 
if he is to have any. Otherwise, and probably, 
a new order will prevail. That something of 
the rigor of the Diaz policy is needed while 
outlaws defy the government and terrorize 
peaceful farms and villages almost every one 
believes. It is one thing to insist on law and 
order, however, and quite another thing to in- 
sist that all shall favor the existing officers for 
continuance in power. This Diaz did. A 

161 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

change must come and be made permanent. 
That its definite arrival might have been vig- 
orously and convincingly asserted at once by 
the Madero government, and not have needed 
confirmation through the further drenching of 
the country in blood, is the wish of every 
friend of the Mexican people. 

In dismissing this subject a word should be 
said about the organic form of the govern- 
ment. The Constitution of Juarez has never 
been abrogated or greatly altered. It ex- 
pounds the nature of the Mexican government 
as federal — that is, composed of free and sov- 
ereign individual states — as representative, 
and as democratic. It distinguishes three co- 
ordinate branches of government, adopting 
our own fiction that the judicial function is 
neither legislative nor executive. The rights 
of individuals are guaranteed, in some re- 
spects more fully than by our Constitution. 
The mechanism with which to carry out this 
scheme is provided for and has in fact been 
preserved — a President chosen by an electoral 
college, a bicameral Congress whose mem- 
bers are nominally elected by the people, and 
a system of courts like our own. The separate 
state legislatures correspond to ours. In 

162 



THE GOVERNMENT 

practical working, since the death of Juarez, 
there has been but one department of govern- 
ment, that is the executive. Under Diaz the 
governor of a state was his representative, the 
jefe 'politico of a district was responsible to 
the governor; and the people had nothing to 
do with choosing any of them. Still it is 
something to have had the right principles 
laid down in theory and acknowledged in 
form. It makes difficult the opposition of 
any argument but force against the institu- 
tions of democracy, and gives the progressive 
group an immediate basis of procedure. 



163 



XII 

XOCHIMILCO 

THE valley of Morelos lies close to the 
valley of Mexico, though at a lower 
level and with a high wall between. It 
is possible, if one has pneumonia and hours 
are precious, to take a train in the unhealth- 
ful capital at daybreak, arrive in balmy Cuer- 
navaca by noon, and be declared on the way 
to recovery next day. Under usual condi- 
tions, however, the valley of Mexico is not to 
be so eagerly left. While the nights are often 
chilly, the climate is otherwise almost irre- 
proachable and the natural charms of the val- 
ley are worthy of some large-visioned poet of 
outdoors. It should not be discredited because 
it had one piece of lowland whose open drain- 
age the Spaniards could stop and upon which 
a somewhat miasmic though beautiful city 
could be built. So even if one cannot tarry 
for months to etch in the picture of maguey 
fields on the drier flat lands, of cypress trees, 

164 



XOCHIMILCO 

of dome-crowned villages, and of encircling 
mountains, at least one can pay the respect 
of a slow departure. This may be done by- 
way of the Viga, the one Aztec canal that still 
remains in use, leading south toward Cuerna- 
vaca as far as Xochimilco. 

There are those who will tell you that they 
have seen this canal, so extravagantly described 
in books, and that it is no more than a slimy 
ooze. They have seen the miserable diminu- 
endo at the city end that is finally lost in a 
sewer ; but they do not know the Viga. What 
stream, even the mightiest, without very spe- 
cial protection, can make its way through a 
city of 450,000 inhabitants and still remain 
"undefiled for the undefiled"? Even at the 
city end of this ancient canal our friends, if 
alert, might have seen something to describe 
other than the excrements of obscene brew- 
eries along the banks, and unlimited oceans of 
mud; they might have seen the people, one of 
the superlatively clean tribes, thank Heaven! 
propelling their dugouts up and down, and in 
the dugouts enough vegetables for a thousand 
tables, besides flowers in quantities really ex- 
citing to think of. 

For thirteen miles as one goes out along the 
165 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

Viga there are no tributaries. There is only 
one channel of nearly uniform width, arched 
by quaint bridges and enlivened by an unend- 
ing succession of barges going to market with 
garden truck, and of little canoes that dart 
along upon other errands. Gradually the 
water becomes purer till it is void of offense. 
Then begins perfect enjoyment. The re- 
moter plain may be somewhat brown in the 
dry season, varied only by the maguey, cousin 
to our old friend the henequin plant, while 
near by on either hand are luscious green 
fields with cattle wading or grazing at will. 
The canoe moves easily, propelled not by oars 
or paddles but by a long, light pole thrust to 
the bottom. In places this is varied by toss- 
ing a rope to one of the boatmen, who leaps 
cheerfully ahead with it over his shoulder, now 
in water, now upon a tow path, his muscular 
though not heavy limbs bare to the thigh. 
Boys fish from the banks. NTew things are 
constantly appearing, not to tease the eye and 
the mind as on a railway journey, but to be- 
guile the imagination. At last, after about 
four hours, the canal resolves itself into a 
great number of smaller canals which are fed 
by springs in themselves worth a visit, and are 

166 



XOCHIMILCO 

conducted in and out among the so-called 
"floating gardens" so as to make every gar- 
den an island. Within the memory of men 
still living much of this area was a lake and 
some of the gardens were actually floating; 
but now the little oblong patches of soil rest 
upon bottom. The willows that grow straight 
up like Lombardy poplars were once only 
stakes to keep the unique real property from 
moving off. Masses of water plants buoyed 
up by air chambers on their stalks float upon 
what remains of the lake and show how land 
began to form. As would be guessed from 
such an origin, the gardens have the richest 
mold, they never lack water, and the sun 
smiles upon them as only a southern sun can. 
Each is as large as a good town lot and any 
of them if actually afloat would sink from the 
weight of vegetables and flowers. The poppy, 
the sweet pea, and the bachelor's button are 
favorite flowers, though carnations and mar- 
guerites also abound and roses are by no 
means uncommon. All these and other blos- 
soms hang down and are reduplicated in the 
water. They scramble over the tops of the 
houses. In daylight or in moonlight they 
make incomparable pictures at every turn. 

167 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

The graceful, brown-armed figures gliding 
about in their canoes strike no jarring note. 
Nothing annoys. The most appropriate ex- 
clamation at the crystal springs of Xochi- 
milco is, "I did not believe there was such a 
place in the world! " 

Barges go down heavy with the current to 
Mexico and come back light. Few , large 
cities have sources of so abundant supply for 
vegetables and flowers, with means of trans- 
portation so cheap. Xochimilco was a source 
of supplies for the Aztec capital in the old 
days, and, unless scholars have wrongly trans- 
lated, an occasional source of victims for the 
Aztec sacrificial stone. Whoever lived here 
at any time, if he had marauding neighbors, 
must have been an easy prey, for gentleness 
and soft confiding in the loveliness of an 
idyllic world are as natural here as a square 
front to all comers must be in a country of 
highland blasts. A friend of mine had a 
quarrelsome retainer who chose to follow him 
from one locality to another and always man- 
aged to involve himself and his master in 
trouble. They went to Xochimilco and 
Gabriel fought with no one. It seems he 
could find no one to fight with. 

168 



XOCHIMILCO 

It cost three Mexican dollars ($1.50) to 
bring out seven of us in a large covered canoe, 
with enough luggage to burden four or five 
carriers in transferring from the canoe to the 
house. A canal ran very near the house occu- 
pied by our friends, the only foreign family 
in the village, by whom we were to be enter- 
tained. A canal runs near everybody's door 
in Xochimilco; there are a hundred miles of 
them at least. Fish abound and come in fine 
condition from the cold water. We saw many 
goldfish of no diminutive size, and bought for 
fifty centavos a wriggling carp that weighed 
about six pounds. 

This American friend, at whose house we 
stopped, an engineer, was in charge of work 
installing a new plant to increase the water 
supply of Mexico City. He took us along a 
small canal until suddenly it widened, deep- 
ened, and came to an end. We were floating 
upon a basin seventy-five feet in diameter, 
twenty-five feet deep, and filled with gushing 
pure water. It was one of the marvelous 
springs at Xochimilco, flowing about eight 
million gallons in twenty-four hours. There 
are several others, not so large, but still of 
great output and all of the same pure water, 

169 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

fed probably by the melting snow and ice of 
Popocatepetl. 

A feature of every landscape hereabout is 
the little church. Above the fringe of green 
vegetables or of glorious bloom, over the 
thatch of the hut, between the willows, against 
the bulk of the mountains, there is certain to 
be a church in the view. We must have seen 
twenty, all commanding because of tHe low- 
ness of the houses round about, all venerable- 
looking and harmonious with the feeling of 
the place; never, on any of them, a "steeple." 
The spire with its call to upward pursuit of 
the unattainable, is no part of Mexican church 
architecture. The dome seems to suggest 
contemplation and repose. True, the Span- 
iards were restless enough, but their restless- 
ness was not upon the side that churches 
represent. Concerning religion they leaned 
back upon authority, and came easily to that 
perfectness of satisfaction which must have 
expressed itself powerfully at times to any one 
who has traveled in Mexico, the land of 
domes. There are said to be more of these, 
chiefly of the media naranja (half orange) 
form, than in any other country in the world. 
And if the Anglo-Saxon cannot adopt this 

170 



XOCHIMILCO 

form as his emblem, for he is self-conscious, 
he can be happy in visiting a land whose tem- 
perament it suits. 

"Xochimilco," our engineer friend declared, 
"is only the beginning of the most beautiful 
part of the canal system, for you can travel 
a full day beyond. I never did get to the end, 
though on a trip some time ago I went 
through a string of towns for over thirty 
miles. I was fascinated with some of the old 
places — splendid they must have been once; 
biit they had gone down and down as the more 
intelligent sons of the families were drawn 
off to the cities, till some fine haciendas were 
altogether deserted and others occupied only 
by peons. It was impossible not to build air 
castles when I thought of what a progressive 
trained man could do there on some places to 
be bought almost for the song that he might 
sing. Cattle of the best breeds would thrive 
on his wide level fields, vineyards and orchards 
would spring up at his touch in this perfect 
climate, water power and streams for irriga- 
tion would come from the hills to work magic 
for him, native labor would offer itself cheaper 
than he ought to wish, and paddle wheels on 
the canals would carry all his produce to a 

171 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

great market. This will come true for some- 
body, but for whom? I think it will come 
true most largely and remain true the longest 
for Americans, Europeans, or intelligent In- 
dians, according as one or another of them has 
most spiritual depth and force — most desire 
to give and to teach among the poor natives 
and not merely to exploit them. In the end 
I think all Mexico will be the heritage of 
those, whoever they are, who come with a will 
to help. The other sort of thing goes to seed 
and to rot, as it has once done in this valley; 
and in the long run social forces among the 
common people, the allies of the man who 
helps, will destroy the parasite. As neigh- 
bors of Mexico we Americans have great pos- 
sibilities at our doors; the question is. Are we 
big enough?" 

My friend the engineer is an idealist, and 
grows very enthusiastic at times. 

From Xochimilco it is not far to Eslava 
where, only a day late because of our little 
journey into a primitive world, we can take 
the train from Mexico to Cuernavaca. One 
gets almost a bird's eye view of the region of 
Mexico City from the top of the range at a 
height of 10,000 feet. 

172 



XIII 

CUERNAVACA, CUAUTLA, PUEBLA 

CUERNAVACA, though not inviting 
comparison with the little Indian Ven- 
ice, is in its own way the loveliest spot 
yet visited. At Xochimilco one rubs one's 
eyes and looks again to make sure that the 
scene really belongs to the world of wide- 
awake. At Cuernavaca one settles forthwith 
into a conviction of always having known thq 
place, and a feeling that everything here is 
the normal by which things elsewhere may be 
tested. With an altitude of only 4500 feet, 
more than two thousand feet lower than the 
valley of Mexico, and with a southern ex- 
posure among sheltering hills, this other val- 
ley has no cold winter, no cold nights and no 
hot ones, no droughts, no inconveniences of 
climate, hot or cold, wet or dry. The town 
of 7000 inhabitants is all clean, orderly, 
thrifty, reposeful, and old. The steep and 
narrow streets, which often become stairways 

173 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

of rock, the thick walls, the heavy doors, the 
elaborate latches and hinges, all bear the testi- 
mony of age. It is a place of running water, 
and fountains are numerous. 

Of course the town has its cathedral, this 
one founded in 1529; and of course, being of 
sufficient antiquity, it has a palace of Cortez. 
We visited his residence in Oaxaca, and an- 
other in Coyoacan, a suburb of Mexico City, 
this latter being the oldest structure erected 
by any white man on American soil. Now we 
must by all means pay our respect to the 
Cuernavaca palace, the more because it has 
been made the state government building and 
because it commands from the roof a superb 
view of the green valley and the peaceful 
mountains. It was begun by Cortez in 1530. 

The chief exhibit of Cuernavaca is the 
Borda Garden, established about the middle 
of the eighteenth century by Joseph le Borde, 
a Frenchman who had made enormous for- 
tunes in Mexican silver mines. It is said to 
have cost a million 'pesos then, but time has 
added much that the owner could not buy, 
both in definable beauty and in the pervasive 
charm of imaginative suggestion. There are 
old walls, built high and solid enough to en- 

174 



CUERNAVACA, CUAUTLA, PUEBLA 

dure; trees grown old but of unfailing vigor; 
old Moorish fountains that have become 
weathered and flawed but lost nothing of their 
airy Saracenic grace; walks that Carlota trod 
many a time, when Cuernavaca was the sum- 
mer capital, and when old Joseph, their first 
owner, had been long sleeping in a poor man's 
grave; benches on which she must have sat; 
roses and oleanders that she may have tended, 
and mangoes whose fruit she may have eaten. 
You will think more of Carlota in the garden 
than you will of its original owner whose 
name it bears; and many other thoughts you 
will have which you will never convey unless 
to some one at your side under the shade of 
the tropical trees with their unfamiliar names 
and their delicious fruits. 

Cuautla, in climate and general character, 
needs no description to one who has visited 
Cuernavaca. It is not quite so old, not quite 
so large, and not quite so full of romance; 
but having famous hot sulphur springs is 
rather more haunted by invalids and Testers. 

Not in the state of Morelos, where we have 
been lingering, but in a state whose name it 
shares, Puebla has a little more altitude, a 
little cooler climate, yet the same quality of 

175 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

softness in the air, the same sulphur water 
that flows so abundantly in Cuautla, and a 
degree of the same popularity with those need- 
ing to be cured. Puebla, however, is more of 
a city, and can assimilate these latter visitors 
as Cuautla cannot. Moreover, Puebla has 
some charming suburbs and rest spots to 
which, being a city, it dispatches many o£ the 
impotent or the indisposed. With a popula- 
tion just under one hundred thousand, it nar- 
rowly misses being the second city in size of 
the republic ; and if it must yield to Guadala- 
jara in this respect, it still claims second place 
in the consideration of the visitor. It has the 
name of being conservative as to taste and 
social customs, anti- foreign, Romanist in re- 
ligion, reactionary as to politics. Certainly 
it is not progressive in many of the usual im- 
plications of the word; but without being so 
it would seem to have made progress in what- 
ever contributes to its charm. The capital of 
the richest state in Mexico, it has a look of 
comfort and of competence. In architecture, 
in landscape, in the equipages upon its clean 
asphalt streets, in the dress of its well-to-do 
citizens, one is reminded that essential har- 
monies may be preserved in more than one 

176 



CUERNAVACA, CUAUTLA, PUEBLA 

style. Puebla society is accused of being ex- 
clusive, and perhaps this is confirmed rather 
than otherwise by the eagerness that I ob- 
served in the daughter of one of its prominent 
families, when visiting in another town, to 
make acquaintance with the American and 
English colony, including the Protestant 
church there. If so, when their opportunity 
for reciprocating came the family were gener- 
ous beyond expectation in making a little 
glimpse of their own life possible. I was in- 
vited to call at the house, which does not hap- 
pen to a young man in their own set unless he 
is an accepted suitor. They were meeting an 
American in his own way. The daughter 
whom I knew greeted me first, after the 
servant. I was conducted to where the 
maternal head of the household and her old- 
est daughter sat to receive their callers, and 
was introduced. Then for a few moments I 
sat in a second parlor with Miss Maria, as I 
shall name her — an impossible departure from 
their conventional etiquette — till the younger 
sisters began to come in one after another, 
down to a little toddler of four years. Puzzled 
at first by a stranger whose speech was for- 
eign, she ended by sitting on my lap. Whether 

177 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

the entry of this beautiful troop was also 
contrary to established rules I do not know. 
Some very wise persons will say that of course 
such special favors were tantamount to a 
matrimonial acceptance; but they certainly 
had not the shadow of such meaning. I was 
not only an American, but I was an American 
from another city, in Puebla for no more than 
three or four days, and they had decided to 
treat me according to American ways of hos- 
pitality so far as they Imew them. If in any 
particular they happened not to know, they 
would err on the side of kindness. On a sec- 
ond call to take leave, I did not see the chil- 
dren till I was going out, but then found 
them, all four, in the corridor in a row wait- 
ing to bid me good-by. It is years since then 
and I have never met one of the family since; 
but this pretty and gracious picture, together 
with others that I remember of the luxurious 
and beautiful home and perfectly managed 
household, is still a source of enjoyment. 

Puebla has more Mexican history than any 
other city except the capital. Not founded 
till 1532, when the Spaniards felt the need of 
a city halfway between and more healthfully 
located than either Vera Cruz or the Aztec 

178 



CUERNAVACA, CUAUTLA, PUEBLA 

capital on Lake Texcoco, it nevertheless has a 
miraculous story of its location, two angels 
having pointed out the spot to Fray Julian 
Garces. So it v^^as called Puebla de los 
Angeles. It soon -outgrew the neighboring 
Indian town of Cholula as Mexico City did 
its ancient neighbor Xochimilco. Leaping 
over to modern times, it was captured in 1821 
by Iturbide, the first ruler of independent 
Mexico, was occupied by the Americans in 
1847, and was besieged and taken by the 
French in 1862. A little later. May 5, 1862, 
its recapture by General Zaragoza was the 
most brilliant victory in all the history of 
Mexican arms, and May 5 has been as great 
a national holiday ever since as the Fourth 
of July is with us. The French regained the 
town again next year and held it till 1867, 
when it was captured by General Porfirio 
Diaz, and the French garrison were made 
prisoners. Zaragoza's victory in 1862 changed 
the name of the town to Puebla de Zaragoza. 
N^o longer a "city of the angels," Puebla is 
still a city of churches. Any commanding view 
of it will show from fifty to seventy domes, 
agreeing in outline with those other domes, 
Popocatepetl and Orizaba, on either hand, and 

179 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

in color showing all the variety of tiles for 
the manufacture of which Puebla is noted. 
Popocatepetl is accompanied by his consort 
Ixtaccihuatl and also in this case by a strange 
figure, that of the pyramid of Cholula, nearer 
at hand. To the north is Malintzi, almost as 
towering as the other two giants, so that there 
is always an enclosing rim to the region^ and 
everywhere the land has its bounty of grow- 
ing crops. 

Of all the churches, the cathedral is the 
most notable. Not so large as the cathedral 
in Mexico City, it is still very large — 323 feet 
by 101 feet. If not quite so rich upon the 
exterior, it is generally felt to be even more 
harmonious; and within it has not only the 
same advantage but has also fortunately kept 
more of the opulence of decoration and fur- 
nishing that history associates with both these 
buildings. The interior is even "gorgeous" as 
described by one writer. It is not only in 
broad general effects that it gives the impres- 
sion of richness; whether one examine the 
onyx and marble altars, columns, and pave- 
ments, or the wondrous old Gobelin tapestries 
of extremely pagan subjects given by Charles 
V of Spain, or the statuary, or the paintings 

180 




CATHEDRAL AT PUEBLA. 



CUERNAVACA, CUAUTLA, PUEBLA 

by European and Mexican masters, or the 
wood-carving and inlay work in ivory, the 
effect remains throughout of unstinted devo- 
tion of rich materials, of labor, of ingenuity, 
and of art. Some discriminating critics re- 
gard the Puebla cathedral, taking it all to- 
gether, as more worthy of study than any 
other church in America, not even excepting 
that at Mexico. Again, curiously, like the 
cathedral at the capital, it is not the fashion- 
able church. 



181 



XIV 

A TOLTEC PYRAMID 

FROM Puebla it is less than two hours 
to Cholula, the town of the pyramid. I 
speak of going by tramcar and not by 
that contrivance out of due time, the Inter- 
oceanic Railway. Not that progress need be 
lamented, even by the sentimentalist, for it is 
by innovation, so often deplored as an enemy 
of romance, that romance is made perpetual. 
Not till a thing has passed out from daily 
habit and commonplace utility may fancy be- 
set it with a glamor of things past; but the 
consecration is one in which epochs are not 
finely observed. This quaint and dingy con- 
veyance, and the tiny mules in front, now 
tugging pitifully over a hard place, now at a 
level jog, and again scampering away down 
some slope before the pursuing car — these 
might have belonged to any age not ours — so 
they do not offend. 

On either side as we pass, grain fields show 
that the earth yields willing increase, and at 

182 



A TOLTEC PYRAMID 

intervals are reapers who thrust in their sickles 
and turn with tedious movement to lay the 
grain in sheaves, as was the manner of reap- 
ing long ago. Such oxen as these that plod 
along, with yokes rudely bound upon their 
horns, labor steadily forever on imperishable 
old Greek bas-reliefs. Somewhat as now we 
see them, asses went burdened in the time of 
Mary and Joseph. The jars that are borne on 
dark and graceful shoulders are of a form 
long familiar before Rebekah came out from 
Nahor to draw water. As for the women and 
girls who are washing at many pools by the 
way, they are types from the age when Nau- 
sicaa spread her new-whitened garments by 
the shore of the sea. 

It was in the afternoon that I arrived at 
this town so variously celebrated, and found 
in it neither a remnant of the great and splen- 
did city which the scribes of Cortez lyingly 
represented, nor a mere "town of one-story 
whitewashed mud huts" which was all one 
mole-eyed modern writer could discover. I 
found under the dominant shadow of the giant 
mound a sleepy and romantic-looking village 
in which the signs of former Spanish domi- 
nance are plain, in which the hues of venerable 

183 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

towers and domes seem dissolving under the 
breath of decay to mingle with the softer air, 
in which the tones of bells in harmony still call 
a simple people to worship at unthrifty hours, 
and in which balconies and grated windows 
suggest many a fancy of love-making in years 
gone by. In short, Cholula is a provincial 
Mexican town. There two civilizations met, 
the older was nearly obliterated by the other, 
and that in turn was left to slacken when the 
usurpers who brought it had been driven out. 
The impulse of new Mexican life has not been 
much felt there, so Cholula dreams on in its 
valley. 

Within five minutes two ragged boys at- 
tached themselves to me for better or for 
worse. They first helped me to buy and eat 
some bananas and mangoes at the market 
place where a canvass of every booth had to 
be made before the woman could return 
change for my dollar, and then it came all in 
centavos. They pointed out an old sacrificial 
stone and were able to hint vaguely that it 
had a fearful history. In fact, it was doubt- 
less wet many a time with human blood. At 
each of the churches they informed me as to 
how much money I should give the sacristan, 

184 



A TOLTEC PYRAMID 

having a care, I think, lest my stock of cen- 
tavos should unduly lessen before they had re- 
ceived their part. One advised the use of my 
field glass for looking at a picture in the con- 
vent; and the other thought me an ill-fur- 
nished Americano because I had no camera. 
They sold me for ten centavos — so far had we 
advanced in friendship — a clay head that is 
muy antiguo (very ancient) and for which 
they had at first asked a dollar. They even 
became confidential regarding their family 
affairs. Both father and mother were dead, 
and their only dependence was an aunt, who 
was at times very abusive. When I remarked 
that they did not seem unhappy, both at once, 
with the most aggrieved tone possible, ex- 
claimed, "Como no, Senor?" ("Pray, why 
not?") 

Together we sauntered out to the pyramid. 
This is larger than any other such — about two 
hundred feet high and more than a mile in 
circumference. The latter measurement is 
greater than that of the largest Egyptian 
pyramid, though in height some of the Egyp- 
tian structures are greater. It must also be 
said that while the Egyptian monuments were 
built of natural stone, this thing of little honor, 

185 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

as our unpoetic friend would describe it, was 
built of mud. That is to say, it was built of 
sun-dried bricks, the junctures of which can 
still be seen, and was faced with stone and 
plaster which have either crumbled away or 
been removed. Its form, however, must have 
been at one time strikingly like the Egyptian, 
though truncated. This teocalU of Cholula 
is not the best preserved in Mexico. "The 
Pyramid of the Moon and the Pyramid of 
the Sun, the two principal ones at Teoti- 
huacan, noticed on our first journey to the 
capital, are more perfect specimens. But the 
one at Cholula is more famous, and the vege- 
table growth of a milder climate has made it 
more beautiful. Its flat top, about an acre in 
extent, and with a stone parapet all around, 
is not so empty as theirs, but is surmounted 
by a Spanish church which takes the place of 
the once splendid temple, and with which 
also the hand of time has been at work. Nor 
is the spot without an added charm of pathos 
to the imagination of most visitors, probably, 
because of that valiant resistance and bloody 
massacre which have been noted since the con- 
quest. 

When I asked my guides and instructors 
186 




PYRAMID AT CHOLULA, WITH CHURCH ON SUMMIT. 




PYRAMID AT CHOLULA FROM FARTHER SIDE. 



A TOLTEC PYRAMID 

who built the pyramid, they said, ''Los Az- 
teccLs/' Other authorities have disagreed, 
thinking the pyramid older than Aztec occu- 
pancy, and ascribing it to that gentler and 
more civilized people, the Toltecs. Indeed, 
faith in the general accuracy of my informants 
was somewhat shaken at this point; for when 
I asked who built Popocatepetl, they again 
answered, ''Los Aztecas." I tried to bring 
them to a worthier notion of the old giant 
towering in the distance, wrapped about just 
then with the whiteness of two distinct cloud- 
levels below, and above with his monk's cowl 
of eternal whiteness. The attempt may have 
been lost. They seemed to take my correc- 
tion at once ; but ready agreement is a finished 
art with them, and I am not sure of their 
thoughts. 

On the summit of the mound one commands 
a fine view of the country round about for 
many miles, broken here and there by a moun- 
tain and bounded at last by the crests that 
make the limit of the valley. One does not 
think it strange that here the ancient god of 
agriculture bade his last farewell to Mexico. 
Should he ever return — as some natives still 
hope with well-nigh Hebrew fondness, seeing 

187 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

that the Spaniards by no means brought him 
on their arrival — should he ever come again 
to this valley of Puebla, he will find that 
meanwhile he has not been wholly without 
devotees. Rude enough is their devotion; but 
Heaven seems to acknowledge it with har- 
vests. 

Cortez declared that from this eminence he 
counted four hundred pagan temples; and it 
is of record that as he destroyed them he set 
the natives, however unwilling or little able, 
to replace each by a building for Catholic 
worship. It would seem that in this instance 
Cortez may have told the truth, for churches 
stand as close everywhere as lighthouses on a 
rocky coast. If so many can be seen from one 
point anywhere else in the world, it would be 
interesting to know where. They lend them- 
selves so to beauty in the landscape, and look 
such perfect symbols of peace and simple 
piety, that one is not willing to regard them 
otherwise. One accuses oneself of ungrate- 
fulness when the thought occurs that blood 
was wrung from an unhappy people in the 
demand for tribute to these sacred buildings 
— a demand from whose impoverishing effect 
they have never recovered. 

188 



A TOLTEC PYRAMID 

Having taken a farewell glance at the 
panorama in the slanting light, there was 
nothing to do but go my way. A native ran 
after me, offering an arrow-head for sale and 
declaring with great emphasis that it was 
genuine. I assured him of my implicit belief, 
and said that I had seen pecks of such curios 
found in the Connecticut Valley. He turned 
back in no ill humor, apparently less vexed 
than amused. At the railway station, for I 
confess I left by railway, we three friends 
justly divided the now lighter burden of cen- 
tavos, and said a cordial good night. I hoped 
that for once the dreaded aunt would be rea- 
sonable. 



189 



E 



XV 

HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 

ITHER Cholula or Amecameca around 
k to the west will serve as a way station 
for one who means to climb Popoca- 
tepetl. It happened that I went up on the 
west side from Amecameca. This account of 
my experience will lack the distinction of a 
first ascent. The summit, though two thou- 
sand feet higher than the highest Alp, has 
been scaled many a time since a companion 
of Fernando Cortez braved its then unprece- 
dented height. The yawning mouth of the 
drowsy volcanic monster, which we entered, 
has become a place of industry for human 
pygmies like ourselves; the sulphur that it 
spits out as venom is an article of commerce; 
and stolid Indians, going every day to bring 
this down, think the ascent as commonplace 
as any other hard day's toil. Yet if you ever 
make it you will probably not do so with in- 
difference. Eighteen thousand feet above the 
sea, ten thousand feet above the surrounding 

190 



HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 

plain, and shaped for all the world like the 
crown of a high sombrero, with snow covering 
all above the top of the broad band, the 
"smoking mountain" will never be lightly ap- 
proached by a stranger, it is safe to say, un- 
less the threatened railroad is built. Even 
if limbs are good, and lungs are sound, and 
heart proves equal to the strain, you will find 
the task one to be reckoned with. 

The first thing is to get on speaking terms 
with the giant. "Popocatepetl" it is written, 
but that is not enough to know. The natives 
call it Popo^ca taypeftle, and, as has been 
hinted, it means "smoking mountain." It be- 
longs to the primitive tongue of the Indians 
and has no more to do with Spanish, the lan- 
guage of Mexico to-day, than old Welsh 
names in Wales with the modern language of 
Great Britain. If you cannot manage it in 
its full bulk and weight, call it "Popo," as 
tourists do. 

A letter of introduction sent forward to the 
ranch some five thousand feet above, brought 
the overseer down at a smart jog with pony 
and pistols. He found us all eating in a res- 
taurant. The moment he appeared and ad- 
dressed us in tolerable English, we knew that 

191 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

if our troubles did not soon begin it would not 
be his fault. Sufficiency was marked all over 
him. He helped to find horses and guides, 
fix prices, and arrange for supplies. The 
typical Mexican ranchman, by the way, is a 
gentleman, a born fighter, ambitious, patri- 
otic, and resourceful. He will figure largely 
as the animating spirit of any change that 
may come, either by moral influence *or by 
force of arms. 

Next morning, the women of the party hav- 
ing spent the night packed away in a hotel 
that was too small for them, and the men hav- 
ing slept on the earth floor of the railway sta- 
tion, our young ranchero with his odd cos- 
tume, wiry figure, light air, and gay songs led 
the way out of town, the guides trotting along 
behind and occasionally making short cuts. 
We had several hours of travel thus, women 
and men alike riding our beasts in the way 
that nature intended. About four o'clock we 
reached the shanty, whose hospitality we were 
glad to find. Senor Perez, for our guide now 
became our host, announced that here we were 
to lodge. And indeed night already began to 
settle upon that side of the mountain. Such 
is the angle that the sun seemed scarcely to 

192 




POPOCATEPETL. 




IXTACCIHUATL. 



HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 

have entered the western half of the sky be- 
fore it hid itself. 

We had seen the mountain from bhe top of 
the old Toltec pj^ramid of Cholula; we had 
seen it through notches among the hills where 
only goats and Mexican donkeys could keep 
footing upon the trail; we had viewed it in 
morning and in evening light from Chapul- 
tepec and from the arches of Cuernavaca. 
Some of us were to look down upon its great 
surface from the rim at the top. But never 
did it make the breath stop and the heart 
grow sick with a feeling that could not be con- 
trolled, as when we looked, straight up it 
seemed, at the terrible cold height in the last 
glow of that afternoon sun, and knew that 
it did not hang over us more nearly than did 
the adventure for its conquest on the morrow. 

Nineteen of us, and Perez with a partner 
and friend, making twenty-one in all, slept as 
best we could packed around one small room 
with heads toward the many chinks in the wall 
and with feet toward the center. The circle 
was not complete; for at one corner was a 
rough fireplace discharging most of its smoke 
into the room. The chinks, though they ad- 
mitted enough cutting blades of air, seemed 

193 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

not to let much of the smoke escape. We lay 
in our clothes, of course, and in whatever 
extra blankets we had, for at that height of 
13,000 feet the air at night is cruel to one 
who has spent months in the mild climate of 
the plateau. Our shoes only we removed, as 
no one wished to awake with swollen and 
aching feet. 

At three in the morning we rose, arid at 
five were started. Should any one be curious 
as to how the two hours between had been 
spent, some of our party could answer for the 
employment of them. In the numbing, blis- 
tering, altogether strange cold of that lofty 
air, we had spent most of the time helping to 
catch a stray horse, identifying horses and 
saddles that each person as far as possible 
might have his own of the day before, adjust- 
ing girths that stiffened fingers refused to 
manage, and calling down blessings on the 
guides, no one of whom was more useful for 
such matters than a sheep. On the whole 
perhaps they were worth what they received; 
each member of our party was to pay, for 
horse and guide during three days, the sum of 
eight dollars, Mexican money, or four dollars 
in our own. 

194 



HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 

Finally we mounted. Those of us who had 
been martyrs for the rest were chattering with 
cold. More than half had been sickened by 
the smoke or some other cause. No one had 
eaten much breakfast, as it is against all ad- 
vice. Yet some, of course, were more cheer- 
ful than others. Part of these were to be 
among the first "quitters." 

We rode our horses to the snow line, four- 
teen thousand feet high in the month of Janu- 
ary, and there left them. Some were almost 
exhausted, so that they had been brought 
along only by leading and coaxing. All suf- 
fered from the cold, as they were accustomed 
to the plains below. Persons who knew said 
that going much beyond this point would be 
fatal to them. 

Henceforth it was to be real climbing. The 
zigzag path was easy to follow with the eye, 
but painfully hard for already lagging feet. 
However, we kept along. I myself felt no 
other distress than this sensation of labor and 
a continued rebellion in my stomach. 

After what seemed a very long time of our 
starting and halting, the sun came up out of 
the low country and showed itself. The angle 
from us was as if we viewed a cartwheel from 

195 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

a church steeple. Such a phenomenon in itself 
would have been curious enough to pay for 
some effort. But we were bent upon other 
things, those who still held out, so we gave it 
very brief attention. Adjusting our colored 
glasses, for we had been warned against the 
glare of a tropical sun upon the snow, we 
thrust our sandals into the path and kept on. 

By this time it was pure doggedness with 
the best of us, and we had reached an altitude 
of some sixteen thousand feet. As the snow 
began to melt, the difficulty was increased. 
Often our foothold gave way so that the des- 
perate climbing of a full long minute was lost 
by a single slip. The need of stopping to rest 
became more and more frequent. One man, 
indeed, a physician, about fifty years old, had 
been obliged from the first to lie down every 
few feet. Now he was far below most of us 
and it seemed useless for him to think even of 
reaching where we were. Yet he kept on. 

When we were two-thirds of the way up 
my nausea, which I had attributed to the 
smoke, left me. The chief cause of this feel- 
ing is doubtless inequality of pressure upon 
the organs, and particularly failure of the 
heart to adjust itself to lessened resistance 

196 



HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 

upon the arteries. One authority says that 
bubbles form in the blood-vessels. With some 
climbers mere weariness probably accounts 
for more than they are aware. 

Whatever had been the cause of my own 
ills, they were all forgotten when the break in 
the everlasting curve was actually seen; and 
when we had won the battle I felt like a war- 
horse. Others apparently were as much 
elated, though some postal cards that we 
wrote did prove rather shaky. 

Most of us carried our own blankets, 
barometers, and lunch-boxes all the way. 
After mere *'Oh's!" and "Ah's!" of general 
admiration, we attended first to the lunch- 
boxes, and afterward to the barometer and 
similar matters. 

The crater of Popocatepetl is at the very 
middle of the perfect dome. Its rim is un- 
broken all around and is of nearly equal 
height, though the side at which we looked 
over is a little lower than the other. It was 
topped then by a smooth abrupt wall of hard 
snow about six feet high. From side to side 
it is fully six hundred yards — surprisingly 
large. It is more than five hundred feet deep 
and some two hundred yards wide at the bot- 

197 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

torn, where there is a sulphur lake. The color 
of this is green — not greenish like sea water, 
but green. 

At several points in the side of the old 
crater are little holes as large as a man's 
wrist, from which sulphur smoke issues with 
an unpleasant hissing noise. All the sides of 
the crater are decidedly warm, though not too 
hot to touch. We went down some little dis- 
tance. We measured, guessed, commented, 
gazed, and wondered. 

Then we started toward the world again. 
When we were ten minutes downward, which 
would mean a good hour's distance in the op- 
posite direction, we met Perez with the doctor 
and a school teacher in tow. He afterward 
succeeded in landing them at the top, though 
not within the hour. 

Thus far scenic effects have hardly been 
mentioned. During the grim effort to get 
up we took little notice of them, beyond mar- 
veling at the sunrise so far below us. When 
at the summit, we could see less than must at 
times be possible, for there were cloud masses 
lower down. The impression of distance is 
not so great as on one New England moun- 
tain of local celebrity which rises a thousand 

198 




POPOCATEPETL — ASCENT. 




>«.' 



m Ifci 






t 



POPOCATEPETL — DEOCEIJT. 



HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 

feet above its surroundings. From such a 
petty height every distance and bulk is appre- 
ciated, and level fields seem to be very far be- 
low. They are not too far to seem far. But 
from old Popo the eye cannot measure by 
anything. Everything is gigantic and in 
equality of proportion, for the things below 
which are not gigantic are lost altogether. 
Yet the clouds and the snow, and the colors 
upon both, and the shapes of mountains, and 
the blue of the upper sky (for there is a 
lower sky also, to one who climbs) — all this 
gives a feeling not easily to be described nor 
soon forgotten. Two other snow-capped 
mountains stood in view above the vapors: 
Orizaba, a few feet higher than Popo, and 
Ixtaccihuatl, not quite so high. The valleys 
were so full of dense, perfectly white and 
level-lying clouds that it seemed every time 
we looked as if we could sit upon a straw mat 
and slide down the snow, across the snowy 
cloud reaches, and up the other side. 

Most of the party did slide down on the 
snow crust, but two of us were obliged to 
walk for lack of a man with an iron-bound 
stick to steer the craft. We walked when we 
did not run or sprawl, the guides calling after 

199 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

US, "Despacito'' {"A teeny bit slow!") at 
every jump or slip. Their caution was wise, 
no doubt, but we had lost all respect for them. 
We brought on ourselves more local soreness 
of muscles from this coming down than from 
going up; but we enjoj'^ed the descent and ar- 
rived at the snow line soon after those who 
slid. In another half -hour we were at the 
shanty. 

The only visible mementos of the ascent 
that I took with me were my sandals, which 
weeks afterward I threw away in despair for 
the bad odor of the native-tanned leather, and 
a small piece of sulphur, which I had the 
pleasure of giving to Mr. William Jennings 
Bryan next day in a railway train. For cir- 
cumstantial evidence that our party did make 
this journey, therefore, I can now point only 
to the mountain itself. Any investigating 
person will find that it stands there in actual- 
ity, just as I have said. 

Our goggles had not prevented some cases 
of inflammation from the glare, and sunburn 
is a mild word for what we suffered; but on 
the whole the hardships and difficulties were 
not so great as we had thought possible, for 
they were all such that we got over them. 

200 



HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 

Popocatepetl, smooth, even dome that it is, is 
doubtless one of the easiest mountains on the 
globe upon which to reach so great a height. 
There are no glaciers, no treacherous ravines, 
none of the special terrors that attend moun- 
tain climbing elsewhere. One's trying experi- 
ences are likely to arise for the most part 
from within. However, he must be a hard- 
ened climber indeed to whom the ascent would 
appear commonplace. 



201 



XVI 

TOWNS AND MORE TOWNS 

IT would be resented by enthusiasts for 
each town if I should say that Morelia, to 
the northeast of Mexico City, in the state 
of Michoacan, and Guadalajara, three times 
its size, in the state of Jalisco, look in any 
way alike; that there are no differences worth 
noting between Guanajuato and Queretaro, 
capitals of two neighboring states of the same 
names to the north of the Federal District; 
or that between Aguas Calientes and San 
Luis Potosi, similarly related to two states in 
the next tier northward, though still four hun- 
dred miles from the border, one might be at a 
loss to distinguish. There are differences in 
setting, altitude, latitude, mean temperature, 
numerical population, and chief industries. 
Guadalajara has for sale its famous pottery, 
and Aguas Calientes its even better known 
Mexican drawn- work on linen. Guanajuato 
has its mint and its mines which do add land- 

202 



TOWNS AND MORE TOWNS 

marks to the surrounding hillsides, its really- 
splendid theater, and its gruesome catacombs. 
In Queretaro they will show you a chapel on 
the site of Maximilian's execution, and the 
church of Santa Rosa which claimed the en- 
thusiastic praise of Charles Dudley Warner 
for its unsurpassed wood carving, its wealth 
of gold leaf decoration, and its beautiful 
paintings. There are the features of local 
pride and interest; but after all a description 
of one town, as seen by a northerner, would 
read very much like the description of an- 
other. One tires of those worthies, Cortez 
and Maximilian, after a time. If, as in the 
Queretaro church, one learns that a superb 
altar piece was burned, not from public neces- 
sity, as Juarez ordered many things de- 
stroyed, but by the French in mere greed and 
wantonness, one's flagging interest revives. 
It is always stimulating to have something 
that one can resent. 

On the whole, even the tourist is likely to 
imbibe something of the quiescent mood of 
the country. It is not inherent and peculiar 
to Mexicans; the animals have it. Though 
very little of a horseman, I have ridden young 
stallions in Mexico as unhesitatingly as I 

g03 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

would ride old Dobbin on the New England 
farm, and with as little danger. I have gone 
through yards full of mules, and suffered no 
harm. They clatter in strings along the high- 
ways without a strap except the girth of the 
pack saddle, and driven by one small boy for 
a dozen or twenty mules. I never saw one 
show signs of viciousness. One will kick, 
naturally, if he gets his leg over a chain trace. 
Bulls are driven along the roads by children; 
at different times, on foot or on horseback, I 
have passed scores and they always gave me 
the road. The explanation I have never 
heard. One man says it is in the breeding; 
but why should breeding have happened to 
affect them all so — horses, mules, cattle? An- 
other asserts that it is in the fodder — one feed- 
ing a day of barley and barley straw will not 
make an animal very spirited, he says. But 
on this same fodder the animals show remark- 
able strength and endurance and keep in con- 
dition if otherwise well treated. Neither do 
they show absence of life in its harmless 
demonstrations. The peculiarity is not due to 
uniformly humane treatment I can vouch, nor 
can animals be cowed by any cruder treat- 
ment there than some receive in the United 

204 



TOWNS AND MORE TOWNS 

States. Rattlesnakes around Lake Chapala 
almost never bite. It must be "the Mexican 
habit," which, contrary to the usual idea, is 
non-aggressive. The tourist gets it, and be- 
comes willing to sit in the central park of any 
typical Mexican town — the park is always 
there — and let life pass by for his delectation 
or enlightenment. This experience is about 
the same in any of the places mentioned. 

There is a town, Pachuca, that deserves 
special description as unique. It has a park, 
but it has an almost perpetual cold wind, and 
frequent storms that make sitting in the park 
an uneasy enjoyment. It is in the bottom of 
a cup, with only one low side, toward Mexico 
City, from which three railroads come out the 
sixty miles and terminate. Down the sides of 
this cup, in the rainy season, the water rushes 
till the streets, flooded from all sides, become 
rivers. Through a little gap in the high wall 
the northern winds drive with violence. In 
the dry season only a few years ago men killed 
each other quarreling over a bucketful of 
water. Now the water of a beautiful moun- 
tain lake has been piped into town and the 
poor who cannot have it in their houses may 
draw it from public hydrants, except when 

205 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

the Governor has diverted too much to his 
private fields and gardens. Still, in the dry 
season there is cause enough to look eagerly 
for rains. Every wind bears clouds of blind- 
ing and pestilential dust, and the whole sur- 
rounding of the place is a desert. 

In the rainy season, from May to Septem- 
ber, visited with the other extreme, people 
pray for the freshets to cease. Every morning 
is an amethyst above and an emerald under 
foot; but every afternoon the clouds blacken 
and the floods come. Market women have 
been drowned in the streets. 

Forty thousand people live here, including 
perhaps a hundred Americans and the rem- 
nants of a colony of Cornish miners — tin 
miners they were in Cornwall — who lived here 
for thirty or forty years. One by one the 
Cornish families are going back home now to 
live henceforth on what Mexico has bestowed. 
And what makes the place? Silver. Silver 
and pulque. The only crop grown with any 
large success in the immediate neighborhood 
is the maguey, from which the national intoxi- 
cant is made. One English millionaire owes a 
large part of his fortune to his activity in 
pulque, and there are several members of his 

206 



TOWNS AND MORE TOWNS 

family personally the worse for too much use 
of it. Maguey was grown by the Indians be- 
fore the Spaniards came, but silver is the 
chief local interest. There are about three 
hundred mines in the vicinity and some of 
them have been worked since early in the six- 
teenth century, till the output must be esti- 
mated in billions of dollars. The claim marks, 
the piles of tepetate (refuse), the yawning 
mouths of tunnels, and the curious mine build- 
ings lend variety to the precipitous hillsides. 
The silver that they yielded, until a few years 
ago, went the sixty miles to Mexico by stage 
or mule train. As late as 1901 there was no 
bank, and paper money was unfamiliar. The 
Mexican silver dollar, the peso^ then worth 
about forty-three cents, was almost the only 
familiar unit of value, and a man who had a 
month's salary about him, unless poorly paid, 
was grievously burdened. It was no uncom- 
mon sight to see a servant accompanying 
some one on his way to a business appoint- 
ment literally staggering under a load of dol- 
lars. It is not quite true to say that this dol- 
lar was or is the only familiar unit. It is the 
official unit, the unit in business. But the 
market women cannot reckon in pesos nor in 

207 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

centavos. They hold by the old Spanish 
scheme of real (shilling), hsiU-real, and quar- 
teT-real, which runs into fractions. This, 
however, little irks them, for they sell only a 
reaVs or a cuartillo's worth at a time. If you 
want five times the amount, you repeat the 
transaction five times. It is forbidden to buy 
or sell merchandise by any but the metric 
units or to reckon money by other than' the 
decimal system. A weighing scale cannot be 
imported unless with whatever other markings 
it may have it bears the metric scheme oj 
grammes, kilogrammes, etc. In the markets 
the law is relaxed, seeing that it is hard for 
the common people to change, but in shops it 
is usually enforced. An inspector of weights 
and measures was in a small drygoods place 
when a boy asked for a vara (about a yard) 
of cloth. "We sell it by the meter, thirty 
centavos f' said the proprietor. "But I don't 
know meter" protested the boy; "how much 
would a vara be?" "Well, a vara would be 
about twenty-five centavos" vouchsafed the 
man. The boy asked for a vara, paid twenty- 
five centavos, and went out. "You are fined," 
said the inspector, "for selling cloth by the 
vara." "How much am I fined?" asked the 

208 



TOWNS AND MORE TOWNS 

shopkeeper. "Twenty re ales'' pronounced 
the inspector, half severely, half indulgently. 
"But you have imposed my fine in reales" ex- 
claimed the shopkeeper, "and therefore you 
also are fined." Both men laughed, neither 
fine was paid, and the inspector afterward 
told me the story on himself. 



209 



XVII 

A RIDE TO REGLA 

AT ten one morning, though six would 
have been a better time, we left' Pa- 
chuca on two hired horses, bound for 
Regla. An hour's riding over the famous 
road to Real del Monte, along which many a 
fabulous fortune of silver has gone by mule- 
cart and whose sharp turns have witnessed 
many a bold bandit adventure, then a short 
canter across a flat, and we came to "the 
Real." 

A little way back we had seen a man wear- 
ing a blanket that we coveted for its rich 
colors and its characteristic Mexican design. 
Now, as we dismounted, he was coming into 
sight, and I went to greet him, with some com- 
pliments regarding the blanket. He was 
soon prompted to offer it for ten pesos (five 
dollars) and to explain how an old woman 
among the mountains of Puebla had woven it 
for him. For eight pesos, after some argu- 

210 



A RIDE TO REGLA 

ment, the blanket was bought. It was well 
bundled and well wrapped, as its condition 
required, but we were sure that after thorough 
washing it would come out as beautiful as an 
Oriental rug, nor were we to be disappointed. 
Perhaps we ought to have paid the ten pesos, 
but we were not clear about it and there was 
no one to arbitrate. 

Having greeted the native Protestant pas- 
tor and his wife, we went up the street a few 
doors to take dinner with "Aunt Mary," a 
good soul whose title of affection had become 
so familiar among English and American 
miners for fifty miles around that she was 
scarcely known, even at the post office, by any 
other name, and all the shopkeepers had 
learned to call her by the Spanish equivalent, 
"Za tia Maria.'" More than twenty years she 
had remained in this place, ten thousand feet 
high, where husband and brothers, miners all, 
had lost their lives, and where she was soon 
to end her own, though we did not know that 
the present meal was the last we should have 
with her. So, here and there, no doubt there 
are many solitary foreign women who stay to 
do good in a land where they have suffered. 

The hottest two hours of the day being 
211 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

over, we took .leave of "Aunt Mary," made 
our little contribution toward the charities 
that she was dispensing every day from slen- 
der means, and joined the friendly minister, 
who was going toward Regla as far as Ve- 
lasco. Pleasant chatting carried us through 
Omitlan to his destination, a little farm vil- 
lage among the mountains. 

Cornish "pasties," strong tea, and saffron 
cake full of plums, all pressed upon us by the 
bountiful "tia Maria'' at noontime, now in- 
clined us more to repose than to exertion. 
Rain, also, began to threaten, and we hesi- 
tated. Soon, however, we were to leave the 
republic, and Regla, so long heard about, 
might remain by us forever unvisited. So 
we kept on through San Antonio, turning to 
the right from that hamlet to an interesting 
and beautiful blue lake, the Ojo de Agua. 
We retraced to San Antonio and took the op- 
posite direction to Regla, arriving there at a 
quarter before five o'clock. 

When we reached the gate of an old haci- 
enda it was with half a feeling of distrust that 
we entered, being told that so we could best 
see the noted falls. Inside and at the left of 
the entrance is a venerable chapel. At the 

212 



A RIDE TO REGLA 

right of the entrance is an exceedingly quaint 
garden with steps leading up to a quainter 
balcony, which runs along the side of a great 
nondescript building and terminates in some- 
thing like a conservatory. Clearly there are 
living apartments beyond that, and pleasant 
they must be. From the office a courteous 
Spanish-looking young man came out, invited 
us to dismount, and told us that we could 
reach the falls only by walking. He fur- 
nished us a guide with keys and we started 
along a way which presently became a tunnel, 
then an arched and vaulted succession of 
underground chambers where smelting ap- 
pears to have been done, then, emerging 
again after we had despaired of it, opened 
into a path along the edge of a ravine. Our 
guide told us naively that the subterranean 
passage was haunted, but that he himself had 
never seen anything ghostly. He assured us, 
however, that it is "una cos a muy es pantos a' 
(a very frightful thing) . 

Moving along the ravine, we came at last 
to a sight of two high natural walls, approach- 
ing each other at an angle; and gurgling and 
plunging down between them at their point 
of greatest nearness, a waterfall. This, though 

213 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

not wonderful in size or height, is a joyful 
thing to look at, and would in itself have re- 
paid us for the journey. What attracted our 
attention most was the columns that form 
the two rocky converging walls. They are 
nearly perfect hexagonal prisms, basaltic in 
the popular sense, whether or not in the 
mineralogist's definition, and about three and 
one-half feet in diameter. Their height was 
not easy to determine, but I judged it to be 
some hundred and fifty feet. Most remark- 
able, I think, is a broken formation by which 
at one place not the sides but the smooth ends 
of the prisms are exposed to view, though con- 
siderably inclined upward. To the right and 
left of these are columns that stand erect, and 
above them are short stumps that are also per- 
fectly upright. 

The hacienda, church, and connected dwell- 
ings were built about a hundred years ago 
by the famous Count of Regla. The cost of 
construction may have been millions of dol- 
lars. Hours would be well spent in exploring 
the place, for which we had only minutes. This 
Count of Regla was the rich man who en- 
dowed the National Pawn Shop of Mexico. 
He it was who lent the Spanish crown a mil- 

214. 



A RIDE TO REGLA 

lion pesos and offered if the king would visit 
him to pave the coach road with silver for his 
coming. 

Again on horsehack, having given our 
thanks to the Spanish-looking young man and 
our peseta to the guide, we started homeward. 

The country from Regla to Omitlan is as 
unlike the barren Pachuca plain and hillsides 
as could well be. Cattle are grazing, crops 
are growing luxuriantly, the road has a con- 
sistency of genuine earth under foot, and there 
is green everywhere. The peasants' huts are 
cleaner and much more comfortable, the 
simple costumes of carriers and donkey driv- 
ers give signs of acquaintance with water, 
here and there are little shady groves where 
rabbits skip; and all is a picture of simple, 
rural prosperity. Velasco and Omitlan, but 
for the Indian blankets and wide hats and the 
low style of buildings, are like contented, hill- 
surrounded farm villages at home. 

One slope as we came along startled us by 
what seemed to be multitudes of glaring 
lights. They proved to be the points of a 
thousand maguey plants, wet with a little 
shower that was all the outcome of earlier 
cloudy threatenings, and now all aglow with 

215 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

red reflection from the setting sun. I had 
seen windows lighted up so, but never any- 
thing in nature. The flash of a thousand 
polished spears could not have been more 
brilliant. 

A maguey field has other beautiful phases. 
One that I must mention belongs not to the 
cultivated field but to the native growjh on 
many a hillside. It occurs when a sprout 
twenty to thirty feet high has shot up from 
the heart of each mature plant and burst into 
wonderful bloom, when the morning damp is 
on them all, and when thousands of humming- 
birds of different varieties, like small animate 
jewels, dart to and fro among them. The 
field that we were now passing was, of course, 
not under cultivation for beauty ; and its yield 
would be taken before it could ever blossom. 

Still later, for night was approaching, we 
looked through the notch in the mountains be- 
yond which we knew was Real del Monte, and 
saw framed between their dark masses that 
beautiful constellation, the Southern Cross, 
which has an additional charm for the fancy 
because from our latitude at home it is never 
seen. This cluster of beacons was before us 
continually as we galloped along the shadowy 

216 



A RIDE TO REGLA 

roads for an hour, finally slacking rein and 
breath within a few moments' ride of "the 
Real." On Saturday night there is just 
enough chance of slightly unpleasant encoun- 
ters to make a spice in the after recollection. 
Twenty years ago all this neighborhood was 
thoroughly infested by bandits. Babes have 
grown to manhood in the villages since then, 
however, without knowing any worse fear 
than of some drunken miner who might give 
trouble. True, this argues that the hand of 
Diaz at his prime was steady and strong; but 
it argues more than that. It is proof that the 
rank and file of Mexican citizens in places 
like this desire order and quiet, and given 
proper firmness in controlling the few unruly 
spirits that always appear in a mining coun- 
try, they will live together as peacefully as 
good citizens anywhere. 

A little before eight o'clock we were again 
with our friends in their pretty flower-hidden 
parsonage, where we were to spend the night. 

An incident of one trip to Real del Monte 
has always returned to me with peculiar 
pathos. On a high hill overlooking "The 
Real," where it can be seen for miles around, 
is the cemetery of the English people of Pa- 

217 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

chuca and Real del Monte, enclosed by a white 
wall. It has been there now for more than a 
generation, and there are graves enough to 
keep each other company. I happened along 
as a child's funeral was approaching and 
waited to attend. From the foot of the hill 
the coffin is always carried up by two sets of 
bearers, alternating as often as they need. No 
hired person ever touches a shovel to a grave. 
All such labor is performed by friends and 
neighbors, which is peculiarly significant in 
this country where no white man does manual 
work. On this particular occasion all the 
children of the colony, between fifty and a 
hundred, attended, dressed in black and white 
and carrying wreaths. While no lover of 
funerals, I have remembered this one as sig- 
nifying the group unity of fellow-countrymen 
in a strange land. I felt as if something al- 
most traitorous were being done when last 
spring, ten years later, I found all the pros- 
perous families of the colony going home. A 
rather melancholy fact for the less prosperous 
who remain ! They will become identified with 
the new American colony that is growing up, 
and as a consoling tie some of their former 
neighbors will still be represented by sons and 

218 



A RIDE TO REGLA 

daughters to whom England is not home, 
and who, though jealously claiming citizen- 
ship as Britons, find that they cannot be 
happy away from the land of their birth. 
Strange ramifications of interest and senti- 
ment indeed, come of life in a foreign 
country. 



219 



XVIII 

THE WEST AND NORTH 

f "P^WO young friends of mine who were 
§ going from eastern New York to Mex- 
ico thought California so Httle out of 
their way that they would be foolish not to 
include it in their journey, which they did. 
They got a check cashed in San Francisco and 
made a new beginning; a railway ticket to 
Mexico City costs more from San Francisco 
than from Toronto. To infer that Mexico 
has a long coast line on the west will not be 
going astray. Those who are fresh from 
school geography will disdain the weakness of 
mere inference here; and you may feel about 
equally superior if you have lately referred 
to a map. My friends were describing almost 
an equilateral triangle, so that after three 
thousand miles of travel they found them- 
selves little nearer their destination than 
before. 

Maps and other sources of indirect knowl- 
220 



THE WEST AND NORTH 

edge are likely to play a larger part in our 
acquaintance with the rest of the republic. 
Whoever has gone over as much ground as 
we have now covered and does not find his 
allotted time well toward its end, is no mere 
winter tourist. He may be the prospective 
author of some first-hand studies among the 
aborigines of "Unknown Mexico," or of inves- 
tigations concerning the economic and social 
conditions which have lately been character- 
ized under the strong phrase, "Barbarous 
Mexico," or of learned disquisitions on fauna 
and flora, on geology, or archaeology, or what 
not. He may be an intending settler, a pros- 
pector or a dawdler. Whatever he is, he may 
be well enough in his way; but to the brisk 
and somewhat careless traveler he is of course 
no companion. 

Toward home then we shall be gradually 
making our way, alert for any thought of 
somebody else that may help us to generalize, 
sympathetic and intelligent now toward many 
things that a little while back we dismissed 
simply as barbarous, by an insidious process 
turned students of prosaic books of reference 
during odd hours upon train or in hotel, find- 
ing nothing dull which broadens our acquaint- 

221 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

ance with this country of our travel. It has 
become the way of the three months' visitor 
"to love that well which he must leave ere 
long." 

Western Mexico has two beautiful lakes 
which might have been named along with the 
cities of Morelia and Guanajuato some time 
ago. One is Patzcuaro, dutifully descTibed 
by almost every writer because of the paint- 
ing' of the Descent from the Cross at Tzin- 
tzuntzan attributed to Titian, Cabrera, Ibarra, 
and otlier great or lesser artists. The second 
lake, Chapala, is the largest in Mexico and 
the most popular for vacations. Both lakes 
are full of fish and haunted by game and song 
birds. Both are high and have a delightful 
climate. 

Among the sierras of the west live tribes of 
Indians acknowledging no allegiance to the 
Mexican government, little touched by any re- 
ligion except that of their forefathers, little 
altered in customs or life by contact with 
white men, and thousands of them unable to 
speak Spanish. They differ markedly in type, 
one tribe from another, there being one pop- 
ularly called Chinos by the Mexicans because 
of their Mongolian appearance. 

22S 




LAKE CHAPALA. 




CHIHUAHUA. 



THE WEST AND NORTH 

The map and the guide-book — for we must 
resume our journey — will tell us that even 
more than our own country, Mexico has been 
slow to develop along its western slope. Aca- 
pulco, some three hundred miles north of 
Salina Cruz, has a harbor generally conceded 
to be the best natural port in America, and 
one of the finest in the world, offering without 
man's effort advantages for which substitutes 
have been so costly at Vera Cruz and Tam- 
pico. Acapulco is completely land-locked, 
with high protecting hills, and amid charac- 
teristic tropical scenery. Some dredging is 
needed to make it of use for the largest steam- 
ers. Here the galleons of the old Spanish trad- 
ers used to put in, and the buccaneers that 
pursued them. Fortifications were built in 
the seventeenth century, and for more than a 
hundred years this was the entry port for all 
the trafiic of Spain, not only with her Philip- 
pine possessions, but also with India. Cargoes 
were unloaded, packed across the isthmus 
about four hundred miles to Vera Cruz, and 
reshipped. But of late a port without a rail- 
road could not flourish, so Acapulco has not 
greatly prospered. The Cuernavaca division 
of the Mexican Railway is being extended, 

223 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

and when it reaches the coast Acapulco will 
assume importance. Manzanillo, already hav- 
ing railway connections over the "Central" by 
way of Guadalajara, but lacking complete 
harbor protection as yet, is another port des- 
tined to grow. San Bias, yet a little to the 
north, then Mazatlan, and last, halfway up 
the east side of the Gulf of California, Guay- 
mas, make a succession of harbors most of 
which are too shallow for large vessels, but all 
such as can be deepened, all well protected, 
or capable of being made so, all extremely 
beautiful. Absence of railroad facilities, 
which are just now being provided, has left 
undisturbed in these towns a great deal that 
is quaint, while being on the coast, they have 
slowly gathered strange accretions of life 
from every quarter of the globe. You may 
sit in the plaza and study them. There are 
more various breeds of people than in the in- 
terior and more variously mixed. Over there 
is a Chinaman with the bundle of linen that 
seems the attribute of a Chinaman the world 
over; and those girls just beyond moving 
along with a gait that is half glide and half 
waddle might be his daughters. They are 
more probably the daughters of some Chinese 

224 



THE WEST AND NORTH 

shopkeeper who plainly has a Mexican (In- 
dian) wife. Of complexion they have rather 
more than either of their parents are likely to 
have had — a decided pink with a waxy cream 
color. You do not know after looking twice 
whether to call them pretty or repellent; hut 
they look clean, healthy, and satisfied with 
life. 

The negroes that pass now and then do not 
differ much in appearance from those to be 
seen in the Carolinas, though most of them, if 
you listen, are talking Spanish. 

This mother with three children is a mon- 
grel-looking female — one may say it with 
slight shame and not unkindly since no other 
phrase describes a jaded creature in whom the 
Aztec, the African, and the Iberian are all 
mingled, and if not badly mingled have still 
not fortified her to make more than sad, per- 
severing battle with life and frequent mater- 
nity. But do you notice how immaculate are 
the starched clothes of the three children and 
how almost pathetically clean her own cheap 
garments? Have you any notion how much 
work is involved to make the integuments of 
four as clean as that? Your laundry bills 
may at times have given you a hint that did 

225 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

not belittle it. And this woman has either 
devoted such an amount of work for to-day's 
outing or paid some one yet poorer to do it. 
.Smile if you will as she sends one of her prog- 
eny back to the dulce man with a goody that 
he has already begun to enjoy, but which she 
fears is not wholesome, and the dulce man, 
with the universal complacency of the land, 
submits to an exchange. So you might smile 
if you could witness the housekeeping of this 
mother of a family. More scrubbing will be 
done in a week than we might think necessary 
for a month; but the tolerance of all kinds of 
filth within arm's length of the door, unless 
some public authority looks after it, is a thing 
to admire. She is cleanly, but she does not 
know what sanitation means. She has a crav- 
ing for beauty, as the personal bedeckments 
of the family attest; but she has neither cul- 
tured tastes nor the unspoiled instinct for 
simplicity of some of her ancestors. She has 
a spark of aspiration after various things if 
only her aspiration were well directed and she 
were not so fragile a piece of yellow clay. 

That peon on the other side of the walk is 
horracho, which being interpreted means 
drunk — ^very drunk. The well meaning 

226 



THE WEST AND NORTH 

young fellow of his own class who shakes him 
and is greeted with a muddled but emphatic 
protest, wishes to save him if possible from 
being helped away by a policeman. "You 
don't want a trip to the Valle Nacional, do 
you?" he inquires in answer to the protest; 
and the name has a sobering effect. Unless 
you have been reading books you will not 
know what the Valle Nacional is; but the 
borracho has an idea. The name is burned in 
on his mind so that even an excess of pulque 
or other drink does not wholly obliterate it. 
It is the place, so he believes, where a fellow 
arrested for being disorderly may find him- 
self consigned to help raise some of the best 
tobacco in the world, under such climate and 
conditions that he will not last for more than 
one crop. The poor people have their bug- 
aboos, many of which are unsubstantial, and 
Valle Nacional is one of them. The army is 
another, and the army has shown itself de- 
cidedly unsubstantial on occasions. Why not, 
if composed of men to whom it was a bug- 
aboo until it became an unwelcome reality? 

This woman with the powder so thick on her 
face and the ludicrous grandee air is the wife 
of some small merchant of European or 

227 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

mixed blood, and the young Indian girl, so 
much superior to her in physique, in comeli- 
ness, and in apparent interest in life, is her 
servant. 

On paper, that is in books planned so as 
not to need revision for two or three years, 
railroad connection is complete from Guana- 
juato all the way up the coast through the 
ports and beyond to Nogales, Arizona. In 
fact there are gaps as yet in the southern part. 
For the immediate present the tourist will 
choose a route farther eastward. There are 
three principal routes from the capital to the 
United States: one by Zacatecas, Torreon, 
and Chihuahua to El Paso, Texas; one turn- 
ing a little eastward at Torreon to Eagle 
Pass, Texas; and one still farther to the east 
by way of Monterey, entering the United 
States at Laredo, Texas. Each of the Amer- 
ican border cities has its neighboring Mexican 
town just over the line; for Nogales, Arizona, 
Nogales in Sonora; for El Paso, Texas, 
Juarez in Chihuahua; for Eagle Pass, Texas, 
Ciudad Porfirio Diaz in Coahuila; for La- 
redo, Texas, Nuevo Laredo in Tamaulipas. 

Mention ought to be made of Durango, a 
fine city of 40,000 inhabitants, which is 



THE WEST AND NORTH 

reached by a side trip of six to seven hours 
southwestward from Torreon, which with an 
altitude of six thousand feet has a dehghtful 
climate, and about which is an interesting 
region but little developed. The country is 
mountainous and full of mineral deposits. 
Fish and game abound. 

Zacatecas, hidden in a ravine between sil- 
ver-bearing mountains, has a population of 
thirty-five thousand and is noted for mining, 
for churches, and for nearness to some inter- 
esting ruins, La Quemada. The climate is not 
one of the attractions though the scenery has 
a barren beauty. A trip to a mine is some- 
times made part of a visit here. My own ac- 
quaintance with silver mines happens to have 
been made at another famous camp, but essen- 
tials would not differ. A tram car drawn by 
mules is the most likely conveyance from 
town. Stone or plastered and whitewashed 
monuments on the hillside indicate the bound- 
aries of the "claim." When the actual build- 
ings are reached, the departments working 
above ground are too numerous to mention — 
offices, assaying rooms, sorting, grinding, 
washing, packing rooms, blacksmithing and 
repair shops, smelters, etc. Many cripples 

229 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

of the industry find employment in these su- 
perterranean departments. The man who 
drives nails in that "skip" is blind of one eye, 
the man who turns the wheel over there at the 
bellows is totally blind, and yonder you may 
notice a poor fellow standing on a wooden 
prop which serves as a leg. These are natives. 
But here comes a young Englishman from 
the chief office who lost his arm only six 
months ago through some mishandling or im- 
perfection of a machine. You have bespoken 
a pleasure about as grim as visiting the forge 
of Hephaestus. Along with the blind and the 
cripples, you look every moment for dwarfs 
and giants. Now enter through the long tun- 
nel where you see the little flat cars issuing 
drawn by mules, and keep close to your guide. 
The walls of the tunnel are part masonry, 
part natural rock. When you reach the far 
end of this nearly horizontal tunnel, you are 
already far under a hill. The elevator or 
"cage" will take you up the shaft to the sur- 
face, or down to lower and lower levels. No- 
tice the great pumping engine lifting thou- 
sands of gallons of gray mine water per min- 
ute, night and day, and always under careful 
watch, to keep the whole enterprise from be- 

230 



THE WEST AND NORTH 

ing submerged. In some places you would 
still find only bull hides, roughly sewed and 
used as buckets, strings of them being hauled 
to the surface; but you are visiting a some- 
what modernized establishment. There are 
sixteen different levels, one below the other, 
to which you may plunge in this cage of yours, 
till your technical friend tells you you are 
only a petty two or three thousand feet above 
sea level and your sensations tell you that 
hell cannot be far below. Along every level 
run narrow shafts, broadened wherever rich 
ore has appeared in quantity. Along every 
shaft crouch men and little children, half 
naked, under their dripping loads. Over each 
group of Indian laborers is a Mexican, an 
English, or quite possibly an American boss, 
his lamp, a candle, stuck upon his hat with 
soft clay. He himself does no work except 
in emergency — ^no white man in Mexico above 
or below ground does manual work — but even 
so his position does not provoke envy. Heat, 
blackness of thick darkness, strange half- 
muffled, reverberant sounds, a sense of pres- 
sure in the ears and of deadly weight upon the 
lungs, a saturating drip, drip at every turn, 
and confused glimpses now and then of 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

human figures at toil — this is about all that 
the casual visitor to a mine can record. Above 
ground again you may watch to see how the 
workers emerge and will observe them riding 
upon an open "skip" — not a "cage" this time 
— some standing upon the low edge and reach- 
ing over to cling to the rope by which the car 
is hoisted. Deaths, you are told, are only 
moderately numerous, the greatest numbers 
being on Mondays or following feast days 
when 'pulque has been imbibed. The Mexi- 
can laborer is not lazy on a work day, but if 
free to do so he will observe all the festivals 
and memorials, for he is a creature of custom. 
The mules that you see mixing the great torta 
(cake) of amalgam out there are not crea- 
tures of custom and do not observe holidays 
nor die with incontinent suddenness ; but they 
have shockingly sore legs from the effect of 
vitriol in the mixture. They are relieved, 
when too much affected, and used by way of 
change to turn the great rolling stone that 
grinds the ore. You may console yourself 
that modern stamp mills are displacing this 
invention of 1557 as well as some of the uses 
of human labor just shown you. And yet 
there are to this day also mines where peons 

232 



THE WEST AND NORTH 

toil to the surface upon notched tree trunks 
for ladders, denied even the perilous aid of 
the "skip." By means thus widely varying, 
Mexico leads the world as a source of silver, 
with forty million dollars' worth annually, 
stands well up in the list of gold-producing 
countries, with twenty-four million dollars' 
worth, is second to the United States in cop- 
per production, with an annual yield of thir- 
teen million dollars' worth, and is third for 
output of lead, though for this the figure 
seems small — three and one-half million dol- 
lars' worth. Silver, gold, copper, and lead 
are very commonly found two or three to- 
gether, a mine being operated for the pre- 
dominant metal, while assays are made for the 
others as by-products. The subject of min- 
ing would repay further discussion if we were 
either investigators or formal students. 

Torreon, with a population of fourteen 
thousand, has its chief distinction in being a 
railway junction as already indicated. An 
accident to our train made me acquainted 
with it, and I found it a good deal American- 
ized. Chihuahua is even more so, being nearer 
the border, and is twice as large. Silver 
smelters — for still we are in the region of 

233 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

rich silver mines — iron foundries, and fac- 
tories give it a modern air. Hidalgo, the 
"Author of Mexican Liberty," was put to 
death here in 1811. Though the city of Chi- 
huahua is chiefly famous for the raising of a 
useless and sickly kind of dog, it is the capital 
of a state larger than Ohio and Pennsylvania 
combined. This area is sparsely populated by 
Tarahumare Indians, the best runners in the 
world, and by miners and ranchmen, many of 
whom are Americans. It is the old sister 
state of Texas, and like it in having vast 
regions devoted to cattle raising. Lumber- 
ing and silver mining are also among the in- 
dustries. 



234 



,,.4**- 



-*^''-._^-. ■- -'^- 



. ^^^ifjL^^.^^m-^^ 




TORREON. 



1^^ 



->5^S3i»-.-e --"TiCTI 



I 




MONTEREY, 



XIX 

TIDES THAT MEET 

A WRITER in a religious weekly not 
long ago spoke of the twentieth 
century as being on one side of the 
Rio Grande, and the sixteenth on the other. 
'No one would expect this altogether to be 
the case, and yet one is constantly surprised 
to find how far it is from being so. Monterey 
is about as American a city as San Antonio, 
and San Antonio lacks little of being as Mex- 
ican as Monterey. The baggage man, the 
customs agent, and lately, by reason of a de- 
cree, the train conductor also are of quite dif- 
ferent types on the two sides of the line; and 
from these one might easily generalize. But 
an article by Charles Moreau Harger in the 
Outlook for January 25, 1911, apropos of the 
admission to statehood of Arizona and New 
Mexico, reveals that on the American side 
from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego, Cali- 
fornia, the "twentieth century" is only 

235 



TIDES THAT MEET 

blended with the sixteenth. From the Gulf 
to the Pacific, the quiet, non-official popula- 
tion who have nothing to do with large affairs 
but are so important in any prophecy regard- 
ing the future character of a region, has a 
considerable residue of the Mexican to whom 
the whole southwest once belonged. He is 
the "native," here as in Mexico itself. Forty- 
one per cent, of the population of New Mex- 
ico are Spanish American; there are 135,000 
of them in this one state. How many more 
are of mixed blood would be hard to guess, 
but the number is certainly large. 

The Mexican, as a rule, is without strong 
national or racial antipathies. Says a friend 
of mine who has studied the subject for years: 
"They are the amalgamators of all races. 
Large numbers of the poorer Mexicans are 
coming to the United States now and by in- 
termarriage will do much to solve the negro 
problem and the Indian problem. What the 
final race will be I cannot predict, but my ob- 
servation makes me think it will be good. 
There are at present about as many Mexicans 
as there are American negroes in this south- 
ern strip; and the amalgamation can be seen 
all along the border, especially in San An- 

236 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

tonio, Texas. There is a city by itself in San 
Antonio where all the breeds may be studied 
by any one who will take the trouble." As 
well as the poor, some Mexican families of 
means and culture have always remained in 
the United States since the border was shifted 
southward to include them. 

On the other hand, the aggressive Amer- 
ican is in evidence on the southern as well as 
the northern side of the border, occupying 
the positions in which initiative and the ability 
to manage would naturally place him. Nor is 
he the only modifying influence. "From all 
these colonies in the United States Mexicans 
and mixed bloods who have got a little Amer- 
ican education are constantly going back to 
Mexico along with the Americans who go 
looking for land. The flow southward will 
increase now that the free land in the United 
States is nearly all taken. The Roosevelt 
Dam and other projects, and the statehood of 
Arizona and New Mexico, will hasten the 
movement. The national line has little effect 
to stop it." 

In Torreon, you will remember my saying, 
I experienced one of the delays that still oc- 
cur from time to time on Mexican railroads, 

237 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

or on our own, for that matter. I entered a 
barber shop and asked to be shaved, putting 
the request as well as I could in Spanish. 
"Beg pardon, sir! What did you say?" was 
the rather sharp response. "Oh, then you 
speak English?" said I. "Yes," answered 
the man, "and it's lucky, for I don't speak 
anything else." 

This man was an American, plying his 
trade over two hundred miles from our bor- 
der, yet without knowledge of any tongue but 
our own; and the incident occurred ten years 
ago. 

There was a young Texan in our party 
who was on his way homeward to repair ill 
health, and who could not eat buffet rations. 
I had tried repeatedly to get him some Amer- 
ican crackers or English biscuits — quite sim- 
ilar articles under a different name, — but the 
Mexican shops that I entered could not 
supply either. I asked my barber friend if 
he could help me to what was wanted. "There 
is an American grocer three or four doors be- 
low," he replied. In this grocery, also, Eng- 
lish was of course the language of trade, 
though Spanish may have been used on occa- 
sion. I found that one could do better with 

2S8 



TIDES THAT MEET 

good English than with lame Castilian in the 
town generally. 

In the "Pullman," which was to go as far 
as Mexico City, the capital and very heart of 
the republic, I heard a party of Mexicans try- 
ing to make their wants understood. "Oh, I 
don't comprende what you quiere!^' (don't 
know what you want!) was the exclamation 
of the negro porter. The number of Amer- 
icans traveling by Mexican railroads is pro- 
portionately larger than would be supposed, 
if third-class passengers be left out of reckon- 
ing. Particularly is this true in sleeping-cars. 
So our porter had a not unaccountable feel- 
ing that English was the language of his 
realm, and that aliens ought to learn English 
before coming in. The steward in the same 
train called upon some passenger to interpret, 
when he wished to buy watermelons of a 
native. 

All Pullman conductors in Mexico, so far 
as I have ever observed, speak English. Most 
of them are Americans, by birth or adoption. 
It is true that they all speak Spanish. There 
has lately been made a law that porters also 
must know Spanish ; but the need of such a 
law explains itself. Fancy a law requiring 

g39 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

similar officials in the United States to know 
English ! 

It is not surprising that English should 
make some way southward over the boundary. 
So does Spanish penetrate northward, for the 
matter of that. But the exchange is not equal 
in amount, as the Mexicans emigrate less and 
travel less than we. There are several thou- 
sand resident Americans in Mexico City 
alone, to say nothing about the multitude of 
tourists. If the linguistic movement south- 
ward continues to be more than the counter 
movement, plainly the line of contact will it- 
self gradually be moved. There is hardly a 
Mexican urchin selling fruit or papers along 
the railroads within fifty miles of the Rio 
Grande who does not laiow at least some 
colloquial phrases of English. This becomes 
less and less true, indeed, as one progresses 
southward. But one is never surprised to be 
asked by some russet - faced tatterdemalion, 
"You want the paper?" "You want some 
fruit?" and — this is a parenthesis — English 
reappears more prominently than ever at the 
capital. Ask a Mexico City policeman in 
very simple English where some important 
building is, and quite probably he will tell 

240 



TIDES THAT MEET 

you. Walk into any large shop and ask for 
what you want, and if the clerk does not 
understand "United States" he will call some 
one who does. 

Let me suggest a few reasons for the 
spread of English among our neighbors on 
the south. The first shall be a negative rea- 
son. Hating Spain as they do, and with more 
cause, historically speaking, than ever es- 
tranged us from our British cousins, Mexi- 
cans have no great tenacity for the Spanish 
language. I am not wholly accounting for 
the fact; but at least it is a fact. Before I 
have ended, this will have become more ap- 
parent. 

A second reason for the tendency men- 
tioned is the dearth of modern writing in 
Spanish upon scientific and technical subjects. 
If a young man expects to go far in the study 
of architecture or engineering, he must read 
English, because enough books in Spanish 
do not exist, original or translated. French 
works are all that could be desired for sesthetic 
treatment, but not as touching practical ques- 
tions of construction. German is learned only 
with difiiculty, being more purely Teutonic. 
If the student turns his attention to medicine, 

241 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

he must do his reading in either French or 
Enghsh. French has been preferred, but 
English is displacing it. The same is true of 
any theology save that of the Roman church. 
The most important school of Protestant the- 
ology in the republic prescribes its reading 
courses in English throughout, most of the 
teachers being Americans. 

The inadequacy of Spanish was smartly 
alluded to once by a young Englishman of 
my acquaintance. At a dinner party where 
no other foreigner was present, he sat next a 
young woman who lacked the usual courtesy of 
her nation and who was disposed to humiliate 
him. Having noticed his difficulty in Span- 
ish, she made him confess that he knew but 
little French or German. "Then, sir, pray 
what do you speak?" asked she. "Sefiorita, 
thanks be to Heaven, I speak English very 
well," came the retort. "One who can do 
that need not learn all the other languages. 
English will take me wherever I wish to go, 
and whatever I wish to read I can read in 
English." Blunt as was the answer, their 
Mexican host applauded it. 

The commercial aggressiveness of Amer- 
icans and English is recognized as one cause 



TIDES THAT MEET 

of the great strides made by our language the 
world over, and not less in Mexico than else- 
where. Already English is, more than Span- 
ish, the medium of large business transactions 
in the capital. This is more easily understood 
the more one looks at statistics. According 
to estimates something like a billion of Amer- 
ican dollars is invested in Mexico. 

Our linguistic stupidity and obstinacy may 
be regarded as a cause of our linguistic tri- 
umphs. In Mexico, Germans are considered 
the best foreigners because of their quickness 
to acquire both speech and customs, while 
English and Americans are universally known 
as the worst. Any of us who is even a little 
instructed has frequent occasion to blush for 
the ignorance and regardlessness of his coun- 
trymen. Hence it follows, though the argu- 
ment brings us doubtful credit, that those who 
will treat with us must learn our ways and our 
speech. Most Frenchmen and practically all 
Germans in Mexico speak English as well as 
Spanish. 

Mexicans know the significance of these 
facts, and every intelligent Mexican who does 
not speak English is anxious to learn. I 
knew well a teacher of scores of them, some 

243 " 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

of whom can now use English almost as a 
native tongue; and many more would have 
become pupils if time could have been given 
them. There were two other private teachers 
of English in the same town, whose popula- 
tion, excluding illiterates, would not be more 
than ten thousand; and both teachers were 
continually refusing work. Besides this pri- 
vate instruction to adults, regular work in 
English is required of all children in public 
schools. From two to five years of English 
is given in all state institutions of higher 
grade, and practically the same is true of pri- 
vate schools. 

On one occasion the American teacher men- 
tioned was invited to call upon the principal 
of a large school for boys and asked to name 
a price for certain hours of English. The 
principal made some objection to his charge, 
whereupon the Mexican friend who intro- 
duced him declared: "The patrons of the 
school pay more than that for music, which is 
a mere ornamental accomplishment for most 
children. By and by, when the Yankees have 
finished their pacific conquest of Mexico, we 
shall learn which is more necessary, English 
or music." 

244 



TIDES THAT MEET 

The pacific conquest is going on, though it 
does not look at all toward political union. 

To prophesy that in a few generations 
English will be the universal language of 
Mexico, would be to prophesy overmuch. 
Spanish has never become a universal lan- 
guage there. Thousands of Indians in the 
remote villages still retain the primitive 
speech of their ancestors. But in a few gen- 
erations, possibly not more than two or three, 
English seems destined to become the lan- 
guage of Mexican schools and the language 
of Mexican society generally. We have seen 
that it has points of superiority as among the 
Mexicans themselves. I have hinted at a 
more potent reason for such prophecy; multi- 
plied and growing interrelations make it in- 
creasingly desirable that we and they shall 
have a common speech. And when a com- 
mon speech is established, it will be no arti- 
ficial Esperanto, but a language that shall 
naturally have become the medium because 
of having proved itself, of the two now used 
between us, the more vigorous and practical 
for modern needs. Barring a catastrophe, 
that language will of course be English. At 
present it shows marvelous increase. 

^45 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

Some who have studied general movements 
and tendencies in the western world recog- 
nize that more than Mexico and our border 
states are concerned in the interplay of which 
we are speaking. Without any thought of 
political aggression the Latin influence 
presses outward from the strong and growing 
republics of South America, while the Anglo- 
Saxon influence, so called, just as constantly 
bears down from the north. Where the two 
tides will definitely come to a balance is not 
sure — that will depend on the outcome of 
many material and moral factors; but the 
Anglo-Saxon dominance appears not likely to 
be eliminated north of the Isthmus of Pana- 
ma. All of North America will some day, 
we are thus constrained to believe, be one in 
language and civilization, one in the funda- 
mentals that concern society, just as all South 
America promises to be one; and just as Can- 
ada and the United States are already one, 
geographers and politicians alike to the con- 
trary. It is not government but the broader 
social facts that this implies. 

We chose the ocean route southward to 
begin with, you will remember, partly be- 
cause the Rio Grande looks so much alike on 

246 




INDIAN WOMEN. 



• TIDES THAT MEET 

its two banks; and we proposed not to be 
cheated of contrasting the twentieth century 
with the sixteenth. You may have it in mind 
also that for five hundred miles the border is 
not marked even by this puny stream, which 
barring times of freshet may be forded at will. 
We are divided only by a line on the map. 
Why should we not intermingle and take on 
each other's ways more or less, we and our so 
near neighbors? 



247 



XX 

CUSTOMS AND COMPARISONS 

THERE is very much, we discover, that 
we would like to have got at first hand, 
but must now gather in these secondary 
ways. Familiarity with the bullfight will not 
be one of them, for whoever wants to see a 
bullfight has opportunity enough. I myself 
am unacquainted from choice. Those to 
whom the romantic traditional associations ob- 
scure the actualities of the thing and who can 
think back to the old tournament jousts 
during a performance may enjoy it. Those 
who wish to read about it are advised to take 
Mr. Arthur M. Huntington's "Notebook in 
Northern Spain," Miss Katharine Lee Bates's 
"Spanish Highways and Byways," or any 
one of a number of books in which it figures, 
including the Mexican guide-books. To some 
it is only an exhibition of a poor old horse 
being impaled or having his entrails gored out 
by a tortured animal that would gladly be let 

248 



CUSTOMS AND COMPARISONS 

alone — sickening and revolting. Many Amer- 
ican men who carry an air of bravado on their 
travels and want to see what is to be seen are 
unable to sit through one killing. Mexicans 
apologize for the institution even while they 
admit they enjoy it, and say that it is sure to 
disappear, though its death is slow. The mor- 
bid curiosity of foreigners helps to perpetuate 
it. I never heard a Mexican silly enough to 
argue that it is "less brutalizing than foot- 
ball," though some Americans have so argued. 
The infliction of bodily injury or pain is no 
object in football unless to some player un- 
worthy of the game — certainly not to the spec- 
tator — while in bullfighting the glee of the 
whole matter is the glee of killing. If the 
bullfighter himself suffers, the sport is all 
the better for that. 

Many comparisons of various kinds at first 
made to the detriment of Mexico are after- 
ward revised. With writers about Mexico 
the "palm shack" and the "mud hut" are fav- 
orite objects of contempt. The bamboo and 
paper house of the Japanese is appreciated, 
but the Mexican palm shack, which may be a 
cousin to it, is still treated with derision or 
disgust. Yet the palm shack has its merits. 

249 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

It affords excellent ventilation where ventila- 
tion is desirable; and if it is not always of 
marked cleanliness, neither are the places 
where men and women starve among us at 
home. At its best it may be very inviting. 
The "mud hut," that is the adobe house, is 
certainly the kind I should build in Mexico 
if I could spend only two or three thousand 
dollars on a dwelling. It is fire-proof, earth- 
quake resisting, warm in winter, cool in sum- 
mer, highly durable, and, when plastered, 
capable of being colored and recolored to suit 
the taste of the occupants, at small expense. 
I have mentioned one in Oaxaca that is two 
hundred and fifty years old and still good. 

Whoever speaks of Mexico as a benighted 
country does not refer to the method of light- 
ing her towns. A direct change from the 
candle lantern to the electric arc took place 
there while only the most progressive Amer- 
ican towns had as yet adopted electric light- 
ing. As Mexico had no natural gas, no known 
supply of native coal from which to make gas, 
and no oil except what was imported, there was 
every stimulus to develop her many slender 
but high waterfalls from which abundant elec- 
tric current could be generated. Part of the 

250 



CUSTOMS AND COMPARISONS 

lacks named above have since been filled; 
though domestic coal is still not abundant, and 
so iron, of which there are considerable de- 
posits, especially in Durango, is smelted at a 
disadvantage and in limited quantities. Mon- 
terey has the largest and most modern plant, 
where even heavy Bessemer steel rails are 
made. 

The Mexicans as a people are artistic in 
temperament and intellectual when given a 
chance. In an imitative way they are clever 
at all sorts of handicrafts. They have less 
mechanical ability than Americans, less busi- 
ness invention or initiative, and less general 
practicality. The representative Mexican 
physician, I believe, knows as much of the 
theory of his profession as the American 
physician, and has done more reading aside 
from his profession; but for applying his 
knowledge to cases commend me to the Amer- 
ican. I have known of some unfortunate ex- 
periences with Mexican doctors, and particu- 
larly surgeons, for whom as men of culture 
and of intellect I had great respect. The 
same characteristics appear in the trades. A 
Mexican carpenter can do nothing for you 
which requires ingenuity ; but if he makes you 

851 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

a plain chest he will insist on making it better 
than the American carpenter would think 
worth while. 

Mexicans on their part are as likely to 
think us better than we are as to think us 
worse. A native preacher of really admirable 
attainments after spending a winter in New 
York gave an account of his impressions. It 
was extremely interesting but also amusing to 
some American hearers because of the way in 
which he lauded us for merits that we do not 
possess. The extreme courtesy of everybody 
in New York was one subject of comment 
with him. New York policemen, he observed, 
are not armed, except with a stick, and have 
no need to be. 

That there are some speakers and writers 
who regard Americans as mere exploiters of 
their country cannot be denied, and while un- 
balanced, their view has an element of truth. 
Americans own some of the henequin planta- 
tions of Yucatan, control mines where labor 
is as much oppressed and safety of life as 
little regarded as ever under Spanish manage- 
ment, and hold large areas of unimproved 
land which an iniquitous system long made 
exempt from taxation. American policy of 

252 



CUSTOMS AND COMPARISONS 

finance compelled a constant apology or de- 
fense of the Diaz administration when it was 
indefensible, and so made us enemies of prog- 
ress among our southern neighbors. It is de- 
clared, let us hope falsely, that the counter- 
revolution and attempt to overturn Madero's 
progressive government was partly financed 
from Wall Street. 

There are, of course, no end of customs and 
objects in Mexico which do not lend them- 
selves to any comparison at all but which one 
remembers and would like to describe. One 
is the celebration of Christmas. The puestos 
or special Christmas markets are interesting, 
but I have reference more to the Posada, 
which translated means "the inn." A shrine 
is set up, and the manger, the divine babe, 
Mary, and Joseph are represented as well as 
other figures or incidents pertaining to the 
life of Christ. Some of the company remain 
inside while others forming a procession out- 
side sing or chant their supplication for ad- 
mittance. This is denied, also in song, nine 
times, symbolizing the failure of Mary and 
Joseph to find lodging, but on the tenth time 
it is granted, after which the remainder of 
the solemnity is held before the shrine. A 

253 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

less serious part of the ceremony comes with 
the giving of gifts, which are likely to be 
figures in the forms of dancers, clowns, or 
animals, filled with candy or other dainties. 
Larger figures of earthenware are hung from 
the ceiling, and blindfolded members of the 
party hit at them with sticks, the aim being to 
make sudden distribution of the contents. 

Another curious custom belongs to the 
Easter season. On Saturday of the semana 
Santa (Easter week), at an appointed hour, 
Judas the betrayer is burned with great 
demonstration. I saw him suffer, representa- 
tively, in front of several pulque shops on the 
day which I recall. Announcement before- 
hand will have gathered a considerable crowd 
at each place. From the roof or upper win- 
dow of the shop, a rope is made fast to some 
opposite building. In proper time the man 
who is to manage the affair shows himself 
and slackens the rope so that it is within 
reach from the ground. Then Judas is borne 
out and greeted by shouts and the waving of 
many small paper banners which have been 
distributed by some merchant, perhaps the 
keeper of the shop, and which bears an ad- 
vertisement of his wares. 

254 



CUSTOMS AND COMPARISONS 

Judas makes plain at once that some humor 
is admitted to the occasion. He is sure to 
have grotesque features, usually with a large 
and well-colored nose, like those of our comic 
valentines. Not infrequently he has a high 
hat and always a coat that is "to laugh at." 
He may have been given an old basket, or a 
great empty gourd, or some cast-off garment 
to sling across his arm to make him more 
ludicrous. If his ordeal is to be before a shoe 
shop instead of a "drinkery," then he will 
probably have a pair of shoes or a hat which 
will be coveted by the people below. So far 
as I have observed, Judas always keeps a 
cheerful air through the whole ceremony, until 
the fatal end, when of course he can no longer 
preserve any air at all. 

Hurriedly taken to the middle of the street, 
the curious figure is hung upon a rope, a fuse 
in the region of his coat-tail is lighted, and the 
rope drawn tight again. Judas begins to re- 
volve merrily, much to the enjoyment of the 
crowd. Then some explosive in his inward 
parts takes action, and all that is external, 
being of paper, is either blown to tatters or 
quickly consumed. 

Once again the rope is lowered and scores 
255 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

of loud-hooting boys charge at the flimsy 
skeleton of Judas, which still remains 
dangling. Perhaps, for mischief, it is jerked 
out of reach again once or twice. But it is 
soon caught, and every boy of the howling 
company makes wild efforts to get at least 
some* splinter as a trophy. Doubly trium- 
phant is he who clutches the one thing of 
value that poor Judas possessed, whether that 
may have been shoes, hat, or some other piece 
of apparel. In an instant all is over, and the 
crowd begins to disperse, every one with a 
satisfied look. 

This performance was doubtless attended, 
generations ago, with religious fanaticism. 
Now there is nothing of the sort, though it is 
participated in by only the most ignorant of 
the people. There seems to be no more 
thought of symbolism than in our eating of 
Easter eggs, and no more sentiment than in 
most of our Fourth of July noise. It only 
shows that the half-clothed and half-civilized 
native peones and their families have as much 
barbaric love of demonstration as many of us. 
For a stranger, however, it is full of curious 
interest and suggestion. 



256 



XXI 

LAST WORDS 

NO, it IS not true that the Rio Grande 
makes a barrier four centuries wide. 
We have a quite immediate reason for 
being interested in a people who are so des- 
tined to affect us and to be affected by us. 
They recognize the future and are preparing 
for it; not only is English taught in all their 
schools, as we have seen, but hundreds of their 
young people are studying in various institu- 
tions in the United States. It behooves us to 
know what kind of people they are. "They 
are all gentlemen of the deadly knife or the 
too ready pistol," says one. "The Mexican of 
position is an adroit and plausible rascal. The 
poor Mexican is a petty thief. They are 
polite, but their politeness means nothing. A 
Northerner can never understand them; and 
they do not wish him to." 

Now it is true that the carrying of arms is 
more common in Mexico than among us, 

257 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

though less common just before the recent 
outbreak than a few years ago. That is not 
a race characteristic, but belongs to a state of 
society, as it did in the pioneer days of our 
own West. I doubt whether we, less accus- 
tomed to have weapons at fingers' ends, 
should be more restrained in the use of them 
if they became fashionable ornaments among 
us. 

It is true that not all Mexicans of brains 
are honest; but when the system under which 
business and government have been done is 
taken into account, the standards of honesty 
that prevail are commendable. It is true that 
parasites have occupied very many of the pub- 
lic offices; but Mexico is not alone in that re- 
proach. A son of a governor in one state 
drew a salary as instructor at an institute 
where he seldom or never appeared; and 
meanwhile an underling was paid a miserable 
pittance to do the work. Some Americans in 
the town characterized this arrangement in a 
way that doubtless it deserved; but they did 
not compare it with our system of appointing 
first and second class post-masters to a sine- 
cure and paying an assistant rather meanly 
to conduct the office. The governor's son was 

258 



LAST WORDS 

only taking advantage of an analogous cor- 
rupt system against which it is true he ought 
to have set himself resolutely as a good citizen. 
About the same time, in the same town, an- 
other young Mexican of the same social set 
was dissolving a highly lucrative partnership 
and going out to make a place for himself in 
a new community because he said he wished 
to be an honest man. The ingenious conclu- 
sion is that Mexicans are both honest and dis- 
honest. There are petty thieves among the 
poor and the unfortunate. As everywhere, 
their number depends a good deal on the ex- 
tent and degree of misery that prevails, and 
on the measures taken to discourage their ac- 
tivity. As for veracity, it has its different 
codes and interpretations. A young man who 
was studying English in a private class said 
to the teacher: "The hours of my work have 
changed so that I can no longer attend." Two 
days later he made a special errand to say: "I 
have lied to you. My friends tell me that you 
Americans are very literal, and that with you, 
if I mean to be truthful, I must tell the exact 
truth. Now the fact is that I have lost my 
employment and cannot afford to pay for 
more lessons at present. I hope to come 

259 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

back within a few days or weeks." The Mex- 
ican is not literal. But considerable acquaint- 
ance with him does not make me think him es- 
pecially given to deceiving others to their hurt. 
That he is polite cannot be denied. If you 
meet a stranger or a procession of them on 
any highway not a city street, there will be 
none so lowly or so haughty that he will not 
look to exchange greetings with you. A bag- 
gage man will not bellow "One side!" but will 
call instead, "With your permission, Senor!" 
If you have business dealings with a Mexican, 
he may not always have your interest fore- 
most in his mind ; but to treat you with a man- 
ner lacking in consideration would be to vio- 
late his own breeding. There are a great 
many humorous and entirely true stories of 
the courteous airs with which gentlemen of 
the cross-roads used to divest travelers of their 
belongings. One relates that a bandit asked 
an American if he would graciously con- 
descend to favor him with "a light." The 
American answered that it would be his great- 
est pleasure. Before his action was compre- 
hended, he had thrust the cool end of his 
cigarette into the barrel of the small revolver 
that he was carrying ready in hand, and thrust 

260 



LAST WORDS 

the other end up to the mouth of the suppli- 
ant Latin. The only part of this story that 
is not characteristic is the slowness of the 
bandit. But if the Mexican is polite it ought 
not to be imputed to him for evil, as he in- 
herited it from both his Spanish and his Aztec 
ancestors, and it works no inconvenience to 
any one except in the fact that politeness is 
looked for in return. The American railroad 
man has largely eliminated himself from the 
republic not because he was inefficient but be- 
cause he carried an air of contempt which, 
while it did not always reflect his actual feel- 
ings, did always offend the sensitive native. I 
have had grateful evidence that the politeness 
referred to is not always hollow. And I re- 
call what an elderly Englishman told me of 
his experience. He had made a fortune and 
had lost it all again. "And who do you sup- 
pose came and offered me help to get back on 
my feet?" he said. "Not any of the English- 
men that I had known from boyhood and 
some of whom could have done it easily, but 
two of the Mexicans whose high compliments 
I had never thought meant anything more 
than an extravagant habit. I tell you, they 
showed themselves men and friends, and I 

261 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

have never forgotten it." The politeness of 
the poor has at least so much substance that 
you will constantly see them share their scant 
meals of tortillas and beans and do other acts 
of kindness toward the beggars by the road- 
side. They have no organized charities to 
take care of worthy cases and it is to be feared 
many unworthy cases share in the bounty. 

The writer in the Outlook mentioned above 
quotes the owner of a one-hundred-thousand- 
acre ranch in New Mexico as saying: "I have 
bought tens of thousands of sheep from Mexi- 
can shepherds without a written contract and 
never had one fail to do as he agreed, which 
is more than I can say for American stock- 
owners." He quotes Judge John R. McFie, 
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New 
Mexico, thus: "Nowhere have I found better 
jurors or men with a higher sense of justice 
than the Mexicans. I have tried murder 
cases where the defendants were Mexicans 
and every member of the jury was of that 
nationality, yet have always found the ver- 
dict fairly given and conviction has followed 
regularly if the testimony warranted. They 
are good citizens, are fair-minded, and adhere 
to the Court's instructions more closely than 

262 



LAST WORDS 

any other jurors I have found. Probably 
there are more defendants of this race than of 
Americans, proportionately to the population, 
but their offenses are mostly of a minor sort." 

Remember that this relates chiefly to poor 
Mexicans of the laboring class, though as 
once indicated above there are also many cul- 
tured and intelligent Mexicans who have pre- 
ferred never to leave the United States. Is it 
not gratuitous to assume that such people in 
their own country would be incapable of demo- 
cratic self-government, once given a little 
practical training and a chance? Yet this 
was the assumption of the American press in 
general during the revolution of 1910-11. 
Not until its close, indeed, did the American 
press admit that any such movement was 
under way. The Public, in its issue of June 
9, 1901, said: "In less than a year after all 
the great newspapers were assured that there 
was no revolution in Mexico — assured into 
silence — they are obliged to report the com- 
plete overthrow of Diaz by a revolution that 
was in full vigor while they ignored it. Was 
this poor journalism, or what?" 

The revolution ran its course, constitutional 
government was set going for the first time in 

263 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

a generation, and the reactionary efforts that 
every one foresaw were soon begun with more 
than the expected energy and violence. Since 
then, no one has felt altogether sure of the 
course that affairs will take. The Mexico 
that at present exists, politically, is unfamiliar 
to me. A few months ago I had scarcely 
heard of the men who have come into prom- 
inence of late; it was hard for any Mexican 
to be generally heard of who did not belong 
to Diaz's group. In March, 1911, when I 
visited the city of Oaxaca, a local engineer 
was in prison for disseminating treasonable 
ideas, as the government regarded them. 
Others arrested at the same time had dis- 
avowed or apologized for their conduct and 
were promised pardon; but he declared that 
he wished only for ability to have made his 
agitation more effective. So his friends told 
me that he would doubtless be stood against 
a wall to face a firing squad. Three months 
later I received word that our engineer was 
now jefe politico of a near-by town and that 
the district superintendent of the native 
Methodists was his apoderado (deputy). 
Only those somewhat familiar with the op- 
position to Protestant work in Oaxaca dur- 

264 



LAST WORDS 

ing the past can appreciate the latter fact; 
nor can those who never chanced to talk with 
his anxious friends and relatives find the ups 
and downs of the engineer so exciting as they 
were to me; yet some notion will be gathered 
of how complete an overturning had taken 
place in a short time. 

During the fall of 1910 Francisco Madero 
himself was in prison. On the 7th of June, 
1911, he was given such an ovation at the cap- 
ital as probably no other Mexican ever re- 
ceived. And there at the heart of the Repub- 
lic where he was best able to make himself 
understood, the people have not ceased to be- 
lieve in him since that day. National agencies 
for publicity, however, were at no time so 
highly developed in Mexico as agencies for 
the suppression of knowledge long were; and 
even if the best means for the purpose had 
been ready at hand it is doubtful whether 
Madero would have had the art to use them. 
It is a great deal to find an advanced idealist 
and an administrator united in one man; and 
that he should also be both a politician and a 
military genius would perhaps be too much 
to expect. Madero did not take effective steps 
to keep the people informed of what the gov- 

265 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

ernment was doing. So it became possible 
for those who object to the imposition of taxes 
on the great landed estates, those who are hos- 
tile to any and all progressive measures what- 
soever, and those who merely resented being 
dislodged from their places under the despot- 
ism, to stir up the ignorant, the disinherited, 
and the unhappy against him. The real cause 
of hatred toward him being that he was a 
thoroughgoing progressive, they made the 
hypocritical complaint that he was doing 
nothing for progress or in the interest of the 
poor. It is true that those who had unin- 
telligently looked for immediate and direct 
confiscation of ill-gotten lands were of course 
disappointed. As for the active military lead- 
ers who personally took the field for the coun- 
ter-revolution, they should hardly be classed 
with any group of interests or prejudices. 
Desperadoes and bold adventurers who will 
fight for hire are no national phenomenon; 
and their theory is very simple. 

Whether the friends of democratic constitu- 
tional government shall remain uppermost 
will depend largely on the courage, resource- 
fulness, and unwavering patriotism of a few 
individuals. This is always true at a crisis; 

266 




FRANCISCO MADERO. 



LAST WORDS 

for those who are given the greatest power 
to serve have also the power to betray. Wash- 
ington and his immediate lieutenants might 
have been able to set up an American tyranny, 
if they had so willed. Fortunately, though 
soldiers and generals gallantly participated, 
Mexico owes its deliverance from the old 
bondage not to any general mainly, but to a 
popular uprising and to Francisco Madero. 
Bernardo Reyes, the only general of whom 
anything was expected, proved an enemy of 
the people's cause. Men like Orozco and Za- 
pata have exhibited their character so plainly 
as almost to remove the peril that any mere 
fighter may be blindly chosen as a popular 
idol. They have no appeal to make but a 
shameless appeal to force; and Mexico is 
genuinely tired of that. As for Madero, he 
could never be an imperial menace. That he 
is no master of military strategy his friends 
and enemies alike have agreed. He is a civil- 
ian in ideals and in natural temper. His 
leadership is a moral leadership and signifies 
national faith in the possibility of a genuine 
civil government for the nation. If he has 
erred thus far it was in trusting overmuch to 
civil measures and dallying with men like 

267 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

Zapata when nobody but himself thought he 
could quiet the brigand by anything but the 
iron hand. The recompense of armed out- 
lawry should be swift and terrible; and to 
make it so need involve no suspicion of des- 
potic purpose. The necessity, if government 
is to endure, is almost axiomatic. 

That turbulence has arisen as it has proves 
nothing against the Mexican people. A 
larger army was required to put down the 
Whisky Rebellion in the United States than 
had been in the field against the British at 
any time during our war for independence; 
yet the Whisky Rebellion was put down. We 
had not only our Arnold during the Revolu- 
tion but our Burr after it was over; yet the 
Republic survived and the guardians of or- 
der and safety kept their seats. All sincere 
and intelligent democrats will hope that Ma- 
dero in Mexico may keep his, till he can vacate 
it for an honorable successor elected by the 
people, and that so the principles of Juarez 
may become established. Curiously enough, 
being something of a Spiritualist, Madero de- 
clares that he is under direct guidance of Ben- 
ito Juarez himself. Madero is not spectacular 
or in any marked way fanatical, but is re- 

268 



LAST WORDS 

served, modest, conservative in action. As 
for his superstition, he has betrayed no more 
of it than did Joan of Arc, Luther, John 
Wesley, Napoleon, Lincoln — all in their dif- 
ferent ways. If, as Kipling has it, he can 
"dream, yet not make dreams his master," he 
may do well. 

If the Republic fails it will be because some 
supremely powerful man has risen and has 
become a traitor to the people ; and if no such 
man succeeds in rearing himself till Madero's 
successor is elected, the cause will be reason- 
ably safe. Whatever the outcome, be assured 
that there is a general and sincere longing 
among the people for the guarantees of lib- 
erty, a genuine respect for law, and a full 
consciousness of the necessity for order and 
individual submission to the sovereign will. 
Sometime, too, if not at present, these things 
will be achieved. The Indian patience waits 
long but does not forget its object. Perhaps 
something of the old high dauntlessness of the 
Spaniard ought also to be separately recog- 
nized in the Mexican spirit. Or perhaps we 
should recognize in it simply humanity aware 
of itself. For it Mexican men by the thou- 
sand have willingly languished in prisons. 

269 



A MEXICAN JOURNEY 

Mexican women have offered their bodies as 
food for starving soldiers. For over a cen- 
tury it has persisted, often obscured, some- 
times betrayed into error, but never quenched ; 
and in the end it will not be denied. 



270 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Bancroft, "The Native Races of the Pacific States "; 
"A Popular History of the Mexican People"; "Re- 
sources and Development of Mexico"; "History of 
the Pacific States." Prescott, " Conquest of Mexico." 
Wallace, "The Fair God." Biart (Lucien), "The 
Aztecs," translated from the French by J, L. Garner. 
Humboldt, "A Political Essay on the Kingdom of 
New Spain;" "Geography of the New Continent," 5 
vols. Lord Ejngsborough, "Antiquities of Mexico," 
9 vols. Brocklehurst, "Mexico To-day." Wright, 
"Picturesque Mexico." Tweedie, "Mexico As I Saw 
It." Hale (Susan), "History of Mexico." Burke 
(N. R.), "Life of Benito Juarez." Stephens, "Inci- 
dents of Travel in Yucatan." Lumholtz, "Unknown 
Mexico." Creelman, " Master of Mexico." Flandrau, 
" Viva Mexico." Smith, " A White Umbrella in Mex- 
ico." Kirkham," Mexican Trails." Butler, "Sketches 
in Mexico." Barton, "Impressions of Mexico." 
Campbell, "Guide to Mexico." Terry, "Guide to 
Mexico." Gooch, "Face to Face with the Mexicans." 
Lummis, "The Awakening of a Nation." Ober (F. A.), 
"Travels in Mexico"; "History of Mexico." Romero 
(M.), "Geographical and Statistical Notes on Mex- 
ico"; "Mexico and the United States." Calderon de 
la Barca (F. I.), "Life in Mexico during a Residence 
of Two Years in that Country"; "Mexican Year 
Book." Noll (A. H.) & McMahon (A. P.), "Life and 
Times of Miguel Hidalgo y Costillo." Turner (J. K.), 
"Barbarous Mexico." Edwards (W. S.), "On the 
Mexican Highlands." Harper (H. H.), "Journey in 
Southeastern Mexico." Wallace (D.), "Beyond the 
Mexican Sierras"; "Foreign Relations." Douglas 
(J.), "United States and Mexico." 

271 



INDEX 



AcAPTTLCo, 223-224. 
Acolhuas, the, 16. 
Adobe houses, 249-250. 
Agriculture, god of, 187-188. 
Agricultural products, amount of, 

90. 
Aguas Calientes, 202. 
Alameda, park in Mexico City, 

120, 137-143. 
Amecameca, 190. 
American capital invested in Mex- 
ico, 243. 
Americans in Mexico, 237-238, 

252-253. 
Animals, quiescent spirit of Mex- 
ican, 203-205. 
Archaeology, Mexican, 133-135. 

See Ruins. 
Arrow-head souvenirs, 189. 
Art- 
cathedral, Mexico City, 121. 
church of Santa Rosa, Quere- 

taro, 203. 
"Descent from the Cross" at 

Tzintzuntzan, 222. 
despoliation of objects of, by 

the French, 132, 203. 
Juarez statue, Mexico City, 

140. 
National Academy (San 

Carlos), 119, 130-133. 

post oflfice, Mexico City, 138. 

Puebla cathedral, 180-181. 

theater, Mexico City, 138. 

Arts, aptitude of Mexicans for all 

the, 140-142, 251. 
"Aunt Mary," 211-212. 



Aztec Indians, 16-22. 

antiquities. National Museum, 

133-135. 
calendar of, 135. 
choice of site of town by, 

136. 
conquest of, 145. 
"Forum "of, 136, 
pyramid, Mexico City, 120. 
religion of, 125. 

Bandits, 161, 210, 217, 260-261. 
Bates, Katharine Lee, work by, 

cited, 248. 
Blanket, a Mexican, 210-211. 
Borda Garden, Cuernavaca, 174- 

175. 
Borde, Joseph le, 174, 175. 
Bryan, W. J., 200. 
Bullfighters, 11. 
Bullfights, 143-144, 248-249. 

Cabrera, painting attributed to, 

222. 
Calderon de la Barca, Mme.» 149. 
Calendar, the Aztec, 135. 
Campeche, 34. 
Canal, the Viga, 165-169. 
Canals, Xochimilco, 169, 171. 
Canoe trip, Viga Canal, 164-169. 
Carlota, Empress, 137, 143, 153- 

154, 175. 
Carreno, Juan'de, paintings by,132. 
Casas, Bartolom^ de las, portrait 

of, 132. 
Casas Grandes, the, 16. 
Catacombs, Guanajuato, 203. 



273 



INDEX 



Cathedral — 

Cuernavaca, 174. 

Mexico City, 120-121, 181. 

Puebla, 180-181. 
Catholicism in Mexico, 124-126, 

149-150. 
Cattle raising, Chihuahua, 234. 
Cemetery, Real del Monte, 217- 

218. 
Chapala, Lake, 205, 222. 
Chapultepec, 17, 120, 142-143. 
Charles V, Emperor, 180. 

statue of, 142. 
Chichimec Indians, 15-16. 
Chihuahua, city of, 228, 233-234. 
Chihuahua, state of, 234. 
Chinese, 224-225. 
Chinos, Indians called, 222. 
Chivela, 70-71. 
Cholula, 179, 182-189. 

Toltec pyramid at, 180, 185- 
188. 
Christmas customs, 253-254. 
Church, on pyramid at Cholula, 

186. 
Churches — 

Cholula, 188. 

Mexico City, 126-128. 

Puebla, 179-181. 

Queretaro, 203. 

Xochimilco, 170. 
City Hall, Mexico City, 135-136. 
Ciudad Porfirio Diaz, 228. 
Civil marriages, 149-150. 
Coatzacoalcos, 85-86. 
Cochineal industry, 95. 
Colhuan Indians, 17. 
Columbus, remains of, 32. 
Constitution of Juarez, 162-163. 
Copper, annual production of, 233. 
Cornish miners, 206. 
Cortez, Fernando, 18, 21, 23, 94, 
101, 136, 145, 174, 183, 188, 
190, 203. 

palaces of, 174. 
Courtesy in Mexico, 260-262. 
Coyoacan, 174. 



Ctiauhtemoc, statue of, 22, 142. 

Cuautla, 175. 

Cuba, 30-33. 

Cuernavaca, 164, 172, 173-175. 

Diaz, Pobfirio, 11, 13, 28, 62, 73. 
accession to presidency, 157. 
birthplace, Oaxaca, 97. 
capture of Puebla, 179. 
discontent universal under, 

159, 160. 
drainage canal completed by, 

137. 
feeling among people toward, 

160-162. 
form of Juarez' government 

followed by, 163. 
Indian blood of, 11. 
massacre of men of Tehuan- 

tepec by, 73. 
overthrow of, 263-266. 
principle of government, 157- 

159. 
proof of strong hand, 217. 
relations with Juarez, 154- 

157. 
repressive measures of, 74-75. 
Rurales organized by, 74. 
Diego, Juan, 127. 
Dollars, Mexican, 207-208. 
Domes of churches, 170, 179-180. 
Drainage canal, Mexico City, 136- 

137, 165. 
Drawn-work on linen, Aguas 

Cahentes, 202. 
Drinking, question of, 68-70- 
Durango, city of, 228-229. 
iron deposits at, 251. 

Eagle Pass, Texas, 228. 
Easter celebration, 254-256. 
Egypt, correspondences between 

Mexico and, 133-134. 
Electric lighting systems, 250-251. 
El Paso. Texas, 228. 
English colony. Real del Monte, 

217-219, 



274 



INDEX 



English. language, progress of, in 

Mexico, 236-245. 
Eslava, 172. 

Family life, 115-117, 177-178. 
Farm product statistics, 90. 
Flandrau, C. M., quoted, 5. 
Floating gardens, Xochimilco, 167. 
Flower market, Mexico City, 119, 

128. 
French — 

attempt of, to conquer Mex- 
ico, 150-153. 
defeats and victories, 179. 
spoliation of art treasures, 132, 
203. 
French language, use of, in Mex- 
ico, 241, 242. 
Frontera, 86. 

Funeral, Real del Monte, 218. 
Funeral electric cars, Mexico City, 
113. 

Gaeces, Fray Julian, 179. 

Germans in Mexico, 243. 

Gobelin tapestries, Puebla cathe- 
dral, 180. 

Gold, annual production of, 233. 

Guadalajara, 176, 202. 

Guadalupe, chapel of Lady of, 
126-128. 

Guanajuato, city of, 202, 222. 

Guatemala, secession of, 146. 

Guaymas, 224. 

Harbors — 

Acapulco, 223. 

Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 86. 

Tehuantepec, 81-82. 

western coast, 224. 

Yucatan, 34. 
Harger, C. M., Outlook article by, 

235-236, 262-263. 
Havana, 31-33. 
Henequin-growing, 39, 42, 51. 
Hidalgo, Miguel. 145, 160-161, 
234. 



Honduras, originally a part of 
Mexico, 146. 

Huitzilopochitli, god of war, 19. 

Humboldt, A. von, cited and 
quoted, 4, 86, 101, 125. 

Huntington, Arthur M., "Note- 
book in Northern Spain" by, 
248. 

Ibarra, painting attributed to, 

222. 
Indians, 10-11, 14-22. 

laborers in mines, 231-232. 

of western sierras, 222. 

sulphur carriers, Popocate- 
petl, 190. 

Tarahumare, 234. 
Inlay work, Puebla cathedral, 181. 
Interoceanic Railway, 182. 
Iron deposits, 251. 
Iturbide, Augustin de, 145, 146, 

147, 148, 179. 
Ixtaccihuatl, 143, 180, 199. 

mosaic picture of, 138. 

Jalisco, state of, 202. 

Johnson, Samuel, cited, 122-123. 

Juarez, Benito, 11, 97, 148, 158. 

becomes president, 148. 

government of, 154-156. 

Madero the representative of 
principles of, 268-269. 

measures of, concerning re- 
ligious toleration, 150. 

statue, 140. 

veneration for name of, 160. 
Juarez, town of. Chihuahua, 228. 
Juchitan, 72. 

Jungle, Tehuantepec, 70-71, 83- 
85. 

Laborers — 

in mines, Zacatecas, 231-232. 
Yucatan plantations, 44-46, 
51-56. 
Lady of Guadalupe, chapel of, 
126-128. 



275 



INDEX 



La Quemada, 229. 

Laredo, Texas, 228. 

Lead, annual production of, 233. 

Lumbering, Chihuahua, 234. 

McFiE, Judge John R., quoted, 

262-263. 
Madero, Francisco, 13, 62, 253. 
government established by, 
162, 265-270. 
Madero revolution, 253, 263- 

270. 
Maguey fields, 164, 166, 206. 207, 

215-216. 
Malintzi, Mt., 180. 
Maltrata curve, 106. 
Manufactures — 

at Chihuahua, 234. 
of iron and steel, 251. 
Manzanillo, 224. 
Marriage, civil, 149-150. 
Massacre of men of Tehuantepec 

by Diaz, 72-73. 
Maximilian, Emperor, 143, 153- 

154, 203. 
Maya Indians, Yucatan, 44-45, 

47-48. 
Mazatlan, 224. 
Merida, 34, 41, 46. 
Metric system, use of, 208. 
Mexican Railway, 223-224. 
Mexican War, 143, 147. 
Mexico — 

agriculture, 90. 
animals, 203-205. 
archeology, 49, 133-135. 
area, 2-3. 

art and architecture, 119, 121, 

130-133, 140-142, 180-181, 

203, 221, 222, 251. 

bullfights, 143-144, 248-249. 

Catholicism in, 124-126, 149- 

150. 
climate, 6-9, 164. 
coinage, 207-209. 
Constitution of Juarez, 162- 
163. 



Mexico (cont'd) \ 

contrasts and contradictions, 

6. 
drinking customs, 68-70. i 

family life, 115-117, 177-178. I 
French in, 150-153, 179. " 

government, 145-163, 265- 

270. 
harbors, 34, 81-82, 86, 223- 

224. 
history, 145-160. 
honesty of people, 262-263. 
Indians, 10-11, 14-22, 222, 

234. 
Inquisition in, 146. 
iron deposits, 251. 
lakes, 222. 

languages in, 236-245. 
Madero revolution, 253, 263- 

270. 
manufactures, 234, 251. 
mineral resources, 80, 233, 

251. 
mineral wealth per year, 233. 
missionaries, 124-126. 
money, 207-209. 
mountains, 4-5, 190-201. 
music, 141. 

national customs, 248-256. 
original extent, 146-147. 
people, 10-22, 72-73, 77-81, 

121-124, 215, 217, 222, 224- 

228, 235-237. 
people who will inherit, 171- 

172. 
politeness in, 260-262. 
professions and trades, 251- 

252. 
progress of English language, 

236-245. 
railroads, 23-24, 81-82, 87- 

88, 110, 223, 224, 228, 239. 
religions, 124-126, 148-150. 
silver mines, 206-207, 229- 

233. 
the new Republic, 263-270. 
towns, 202-209. 



276 



INDEX 



Mexico (cont'd) 

vegetation, 83-85. 

weights and measures, 207- 
209. 

western coast line, 220. 

women, 72-80, 121-122, 225- 
226. 
Mexico City, 67, 109-144. 

Americans in, 240. 

art, 133-135, 138. 

atmospheric pressure, 9. 

bullfights, 143-144, 248-249. 

cathedral, 120-121, 181. 

choice of site, 136-137. 

churches, 126-128. 

City Hall, 135-136. 

comparisons with other cap- 
ital cities, 111-112, 143-144. 

cosmopolitan character, 110- 
111. 

drainage canal, 136-137. 

English language in, 240-241. 

Flower market, 119, 128. 

gaiety of, considered, 143- 
144. 

hotels, 110. 

houses, 115-117. 

National Academy of Arts 
(San Carlos), 119, 130-132. 

National Museum, 133-135. 

National Palace, 119. 

National Pawn Shop, 119, 
129-130, 214. 

newspapers, 109. 

opera in, 139. 

parks, 119-120, 137-143. 

people, 139. 

post office, 137-138. 

residences, 115-118. 

slums, 139. 

theater, 138-139. 

Thieves' Market, 119, 128- 
129. 
Michoacan, state of, 202. 
Minerals, Tehuantepec, 80. 
Mines, Guanajuato, 202. 
Mining, 229-233. 



Mint, Guanajuato, 202. 
Missionaries, 124-126. 
Mitla, ruins at, 100, 103-106. 
Monte Alban, ruins of, 98-99. 
Montejo, house of, Merida, 47. 
Monterey, 228, 235. 

iron and steel plant at, 251. 
Montezuma, 143. 
Morelia, 202, 222. 
Morelos, valley and state of, 164, 

175. 
Morro Castle, 30-31. 
Murillo, paintings by, 121, 132. 
Music, Mexican appreciation of, 

141. 

Napoleon III, schemes of, 150- 

153. 
National Academy of Arts, 119, 

130-132. 
National Museum, 133-135. 
National Palace, 119. 
National Pawn Shop, 119, 129- 

130,214. 
Negroes, Mexican, 225. 
Nogales, Arizona, 228. 
Nogales, Sonora, 228. 
Nuevo Laredo, 228. 

Oaxaca, city of, 92, 94-98, 174, 

250, 264. 
Oaxaca, state of, 13, 92, 264. 
Ojo de Agua, lake, 212. 
Omitlan, 212, 215. 
Onyx, Mexican, 121. 
Opera, Mexico City, 139. 
Orizaba, city of, 106. 
Orizaba, Mt., 179, 199. 
Orozco, insurgent leader, 267. 
Outlook article, cited and quoted, 

235-236, 262-263. 
Ox-carts, 82, 96. 
Oxen, Cholula road, 183. 

Pachuca, 205-209, 217. 
Paintings — 

cathedral, Mexico City, 121. 



277 



INDEX 



Paintings (cont'd) 

"Descent from the Cross" at 
Tzintzuntzan, 222. 

National Academy, 132. 

Puebla cathedral, 180-181. 
Palm shacks, Mexican, 249-250. 
Parra, Felix, painting by, 132, 133. 
Paseo de los Cocos, Vera Cruz, 63. 
Patzcuaro, Lake, 222. 
Pearsons, the, 25, 87. 
Peons, 122-123, 226-227, 231-232. 
Perez, Senor, 192, 193, 198. 
Pesos, Mexican dollars, 207. 
Physicians, Mexican, 251. 
Politeness, Mexican, 260-262. 
Popocatepetl, 143, 179. 180, 187. 

altitude, 190. 

appearance, 191. 

ascent of, 190-201. 

comparative ease of ascent, 
201. 

descent of, 199-200. 

description of crater, 197-198. 

meaning of name, 191. 

mosaic picture of, 138. 

pronunciation, 191. 

railway to, projected, 88. 

view from summit, 198. 
Post office, Mexico City, 137-138. 
Pottery of Guadalajara, 202. 
Prehistoric monuments, Uxmal, 

49. See Ruins. 
Prescott, W. H., "Conquest of 

Mexico" by, 21. 
Progreso, 34, 41, 51. 
Protestantism in Mexico, 124, 

125-126. 
Public, the, quoted, 263. 
Puebla, city of, 175-181. 

cathedral, 180. 

churches, 179-181. 

history, 178-179. 

naming of, 179. 

population, 176. 

society, 177-178. 

suburbs, 176. 

tiles made at, 180. 



Piiebla, state of, 175, 176. 
Puerto Mexico, 85-86. 
Pulque, 16, 206-207. 
Pyramid — 

Aztec, Mexico City, 120. 

Toltec, Cholula, 180, 185-188. 
Pyramids of Sun and Moon, 108, 
186. 

QUERETARO, 202. 

chapel at, 203. 
execution of Maximilian at, 
153. 
Quetzalcoatl, god of peace, 19. 

Railways — 

building of first, 24. 

connections by, with United 
States, 110, 228. 

English spoken on, 239. 

on west coast, 224. 

Tehuantepec line, 81-82, 87- 
88. 
Ranchmen, characteristics of, 192. 
Rattlesnakes, Lake Chapala, 205. 
Real, shilling, 208. 
Real del Monte, 210, 216, 217, 218. 
Regla, 210, 212-215. 
Regia, Count of, 214. 
Religious toleration, 148-149. 
Reni, Guido, paintings by, 132. 
Reyes, Bernardo, 267. 
Rubber industry, 88-90. 
Rubens, paintings by, 132. 
Ruins — 

La Quemada, 229. 

Mitla, 100, 103-106. 

Monte Alban, 98-99. 

Tula, 16-17. 

Uxmal, 49. 

Yucatan, 48-50. 
Rurales, organization of, by Diaz, 
74. 

Sacrificial stones, 135, 168, 184. 
Salina Cruz, 82-83, 223. 
San Angel, suburb of, 137, 



278 



INDEX 



San Antonio, town of, 212. 

San Antonio, Texas, 235. 

San Bias, 224. 

San Carlos, Academy of, 119, 130- 

132. 
San Juan de Ulua, Castle of. Vera 

Cruz, 61-62. 
San Juan Teotihuacan, Pyramids 

at, 108. 
San Luis Potosi, 202._ 
Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de, 

147-148. 
Santa Lucrecia, 67-70. 
Santa Rosa, church of, Queretaro, 

203. 
Santo Domingo, church of, Oax- 

aca, 96. 
Seward, William H., cited, 148. 
Silver, annual production of, 233. 
Silver mining, 206-207. 
Slavery question, Yucatan, 51-56. 
Slums, Mexico City, 139. 
Southern Cross, the, 216. 
Spaniards in Mexico, 20-22. 
Spanish language, displacement of, 

and reasons, 241-242. 
Springs — 

at Xochimilco, 169. 
sulphur, at Cuautla, 175. 
Statues — 

Mexico City, 140, 142. 
of Hidalgo, 145. 
Puebla cathedral, 180. 
Steel manufacture, Monterey, 251. 
Stephens, John L., cited, 50. 
Suarez, Pino, 48. 
Sulphur from Popocatepetl, 190, 

198. 
Sulphur springs, Cuautla, 175. 

Tactjbata, suburb of Mexico 

City, 137. 
Tampico, 57. 

Tapestries, Puebla cathedral, 180. 
Tarahumare Indians, 234. 
Taxicabs, Mexico City, 112. 
Tehuacan, 93-94. 



Tehuantepec, Isthmus of, 67-91. 
Tehuantepec, town of, 72-73, 

75-82. 
Temples, Cholula, 188. 
Teotihuacan, pyramids at, 186, 
Tetrazzini, 139. 
Texas, cities of, corresponding to 

cities across the border, 228. 
Texcoco, Lake, 127, 179. 
Theaters, 138-139, 203. 
Thieves' Market, 119, 128-129. 
Tile manufacture, Puebla, 180. 
Time-tables, the matter of, 65-66. 
Titian, paintings by, 132, 222. 
Tlacolula, 100-101. 
Tlaxcalan Indians, 19. 
Toltec Indians, 15. 
Torreon, 228, 229, 233, 237-239. 
Tree of Tule, 101. 
Tula, ruins at, 16-17. 
Tule, village of, 101-102. 
Tzintzuntzan, painting at, 222. 

United States — 

attitude toward Juarez' gov- 
ernment, 150-153. 

capital from, invested in 
Mexico, 243. 

citizens of, in Mexico, 237- 
238. 

Mexicans in, 236-237. 

railway connections between 
Mexico and, 228. See also 
Railways. 
Uxmal, ruins of, Yucatan, 49. 

Valle Nacional, 227. 
Velasco, 212, 215. 
Vera Cruz, 23, 57-66. 
Viga Canal, the, 165-169. 

Wallace, Lew, "Fair God" by, 

21. 
Warner, Charles Dudley, 203. 
Washwomen, 183. 
Waterfalls, 213-214, 250. 
Weights and measures, 207-209. 



279 



INDEX 



White Lady (Ixtaccihuatl), 143. 
Women — 

community of, Tehuantepec, 

72-80. 
Mexico City, 121-122. 
of west coast towns, 225- 

226. 
Vera Cruz, 58. 

XocHiMiLco, 164-172. 
canals, 166, 169. 
churches, 170-171. 
floating gardens, 167. 
possibilities of, 171-172. 
springs, 169. 
the Mexican Venice, 173. 

Yaqui laborers, Yucatan, 44-46, 
51-56. 



Yucatan — 

henequin production, 39, 42, 

51. 
imports, 39. 
laborers, 44-46, 51-56. 
people, 44-46. 
ruins, 48-50. 
seaports, 34. 
slavery question, 51-56. 
water and soil, 42-43. 

Zacatecas, 228, 229-233. 
Zapata, insurgent leader, 267, 268. 
Zaragoza, General, 179. 
Zempoaltepec, Mt., 99. 
Zocalo — 

Mexico City, 119. 

Oaxaca, 97, 98. 
Zurbardn, paintings by, 132. 



280 



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